James Russell Lowell: a biography

VJ

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

A BIOGRAPHY

BY

HORACE ELISHA SCUDDER

IN TWO VOLUMES

VOL. I

COPYRIGHT, 1901, BY HORACE E. SCUDDEB

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
PUBLISHED NOVEMBER, ICJOI

TO

G-O-S-

' NAUGHT CAN BE UNWORTHY, DONE FOR YOU."

PREFACE

THE existence of the two volumes of Letters of
James Russell Lowell, edited by Charles Eliot
Norton, has determined the character of this bio
graphy. If they had not been published, I might
have made a Life and Letters which would have
been in the main Lowell's own account of himself,
in his voluminous correspondence, annotated only
by such further account of him as his letters failed
to supply. As it is, though I have had access to
a great many letters not contained in Mr. Norton's
work, I have thought it desirable not so much
to supplement the Letters with other letters, as to
complement those volumes with a more formal
biography, using such letters or portions of letters
as I print for illustration of my subject, rather
than as the basis of the narrative.

I have kept the Letters always by my side as my
main book of reference ; by the courtesy of their
editor and by arrangement with their publishers,
Messrs. Harper & Brothers, I have now and then
drawn upon them where it seemed especially de
sirable that Lowell should speak for himself, but

viii PREFACE

their greatest use to me has been in their disclo
sure of Lowell's personality, for they undoubtedly
contain the cream of his correspondence. I have,
however, had other important material for my use.
First of all, Lowell's collected writings in verse and
prose, and some uncollected writings, both in print
and manuscript. After all that a biographer can
do, after all that Lowell himself can do through
his letters, the substantial and enduring revelation
of the man is in that free converse which he had
with the world in the many forms which his liter
ary activity took.

After this I must again thank Mr. Norton for
his generosity in placing in my hands a large body
of letters and papers, which he holds as Lowell's
literary executor ; perhaps even more for the wise
counsel with which he has freely aided me in the
course of the work. Without his cooperation the
biography could not have been written in its ful
ness.

My thanks are due, also, to the friends and the
children of the friends of Lowell who have sent
me letters and other material ; to Miss Charlotte
P. Briggs, daughter of the late Charles F. Briggs,
the warm friend of Lowell in his early literary
life ; to Mrs. Sydney Howard Gay, who sent me
not only letters, but the original manuscript of

PREFACE ix

Lowell's contributions to the National Anti-Slav
ery Standard ; to Mrs. Richard Grant White; to
Dr. Edward Everett Hale, whose James Russell
Lowell and his Friends has been a pleasant
accompaniment to my labors ; to General James
Lowell Carter for the use of his father's letters ;
to Col. T. W. Higginson ; to Mrs. S. B. Herrick ;
to Mrs. Mark H. Liddell for Lowell's letters to
Mr. John W. Field ; to Mr. R. R. Bowker ; to
Mr. R. W. Gilder ; to Mr. Edwin L. Godkin ;
to Mr. Howells, Mr. Aldrich, Mr. De Witt Miller,
Mr. J. Spenser Trask, and others.
CAMBRIDGE, MASS., 27 September, 1901.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. ELMWOOD AND THE LOWELLS . 1

II. SCHOOL AND COLLEGE ... 19

III. FIRST VENTURES 62

IV. IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS . . 151

V. A FABLE FOR CRITICS, THE BIGLOW
PAPERS, AND THE VISION OF SIR

LAUNFAL 238

VI. Six YEARS . .... 270

VII. FIFTEEN MONTHS IN EUROPE . . 309

VIII. AN END AND A BEGINNING . . 346

IX. THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY . . . 408

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL . . Frontispiece
From a photograph by Gutekunst taken in 1889.

REV. CHARLES LOWELL 10

From a painting by Rand, in the possession of
Charles Lowell.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL IN 1843 . . .116
Etched by W. H. W. Bicknell, from the painting
by William Page.

MRS. CHARLES LOWELL 306

From a painting by Rand, in the possession of
James Duarie Lowell.

MRS. MARIA WHITE LOWELL .... 360
From a drawing by Cheney, after a painting by
William Page.

HOUSE OF DR. ESTES HOWE, CAMBRIDGE . . 384

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

CHAPTER I

ELMWOOD AND THE LOWELLS

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL was born at Elmwood
in Cambridge, New England, Monday, 22 Febru
ary, 1819. When he was about to leave England
at the close of his term as American minister, he
was begged by a friend to make Washington his
home, for there he would find the world in which
lately he had been living ; but he answered : " I
have but one home in America, and that is the
house where I was born, and where, if it shall
please God, I hope to die. I should n't be happy
anywhere else ; " and at Elmwood he died, Wednes
day, 12 August, 1891.

The place was endeared to him by a thousand
memories, and he liked it none the less for the his
toric associations, which lent it a flavor whimsically
suggestive to him of his own lurking sympathy.
" It will make a frightful Conservative of you be
fore you know it," lie wrote in 1873 to Mr. Aldrich,
then living at Elmwood ; ." it was born a Tory and
will die so. Don't get too used to it. I often wish
I had not grown into it so."

The house was one of a succession of spacious

2 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

dwellings set in broad fields, bordering on the
Charles River, built in the eighteenth century, and
occupied for the most part, before the War for In
dependence, by loyal merchants and officers of the
Crown. They were generous country places, plea
santly remote from Boston, which was then reached
only by a long detour through Brookline and Rox-
bury, and the owners of these estates left them, one
by one, as they were forced out by the revolt; of
the province : but the name of Tory Row lingered
about the group, and there had been no great
change in the outward appearance of the neighbor
hood when Lowell was born in one of these old
houses.

From the colleges, past the unenclosed common,
a road ran in the direction of Watertown. It
skirted the graveyard, next to which was Christ
Church, the ecclesiastical home of the occupants
of Tory Row, and shortly turned again by an
elm already old when Washington took command,
under its shade, of the first American army.
Along the line of what is now known as Mason
Street, it passed into the thoroughfare upon which
were strung the houses of Tory Row ; a lane en
tered it at this point, down which one could have
walked to the house of the vacillating Thomas
Brattle, occupied during the siege of Boston by
Quartermaster-General Mifflin ; the main road, now
known as Brattle Street, but in Lowell's youth still
called the Old Road, keeping on toward Water-
town, passed between the estates of the two Vas-
salls, Henry and John, Colonel John Vassall's

ELM WOOD AND THE LOWELLS 3

l

house becoming in the siege of Boston the head
quarters of Washington, and wreathing its sword
later in the myrtle boughs of Longfellow. Then,
at what is now the corner of Brattle and Sparks
streets, stood the Lechmere house, afterward Jona
than Sewall's, and occupied for a while by the
Baron Riedesel, when he was a prisoner of war
after the defeat of Burgoyne, in whose army he
commanded the Hessian forces.

The Baroness Riedesel, in her lively letters, re
hearses the situation as it existed just before she
and her husband were quartered in Cambridge :
" Seven families, who were connected with each
other, partly by the ties of relationship and partly
by affection, had here farms, gardens, and magnifi
cent houses, and not far off plantations of fruit.
The owners of these were in the habit of daily
meeting each other in the afternoon, now at the
house of one, and now at another, and making
themselves merry with music and the dance — liv
ing in prosperity, united and happy, until, alas !
this ruinous war severed them, and left all their
houses desolate, except two, the proprietors of
which were also soon obliged to flee." Beyond the
Lechmere-Sewall estate was that of Judge Joseph
Lee, where in Lowell's middle day lived his friend
and " corrector of the press " George Nichols, and
then, just before the road made another bend, came
the Fayerweather house, occupied in Lowell's
youth by William Wells, the schoolmaster. Here
the road turned to the south, and passed the last
of the Row, known in later years as Elmwood.

The house, square in form, was built in 1767 on
the simple model which translated the English
brick manor house of the Georgian period into the
terms of New England wood ; it was well propor
tioned, roomy, with a hall dividing it midway ; and
such features as abundant use of wood in the inte
rior finish, and quaintly twisted banisters to its
staircase, preserve the style of the best of domestic
colonial buildings. Heavy oaken beams give the
structure solidity and the spaces between them in
the four outer walls are filled in with brick, while
great chimneys are the poles which fasten to the
earth the tent which seems likely still to shelter
many generations.

The house was built for Thomas Oliver, the son
of a West India merchant, and a man of fortune,
who came from the town of Dorchester, not far off,
to live in Cambridge, probably because of his mar
riage to a daughter of Colonel John Vassall. He
was lieutenant-governor of the Province, and had
been appointed by George III. President of the
Council, a position which rendered him especially
obnoxious to the freemen of Massachusetts. In
that contention for strict construction of the char
ter, which was one of the marks of the allegiance
to law characteristic of the king's American sub
jects, it was held that councillors were to be elected,
not appointed. On the morning of 2 September,
1774, a large number of the freeholders of Mid
dlesex County assembled at Cambridge and sur
rounded Oliver's house. He had previously con
ferred with these zealous people and represented

\

ELMWOOD AND THE LOWELLS 5

that as his office of president was really the result
of his being lieutenant-governor he would incur his
Majesty's displeasure if he resigned the one office
and retained the other. The explanation seemed
satisfactory for a while, but on the appearance
of some signs of activity among his Majesty's
soldiers, the committee in charge renewed their
demands, and drew up a paper containing a resig
nation of his office as president, which they called
011 the lieutenant-governor to sign. He did so,
adding the significant clause : " my house at Cam
bridge being surrounded by about four thousand
people, in compliance with their command I sign
my name."

Oliver left Cambridge immediately, never to
return. He succeeded to the civil government
of Boston, and Sir William Howe to the mili
tary command, when Governor Gage returned to
England, but when Boston was evacuated Oliver
retired with the British forces. The estate, with
others in the neighborhood, was seized for public
use. When the American army was posted in
Cambridge it was used as a hospital for soldiers.
Afterwards it was leased by the Committee of Cor
respondence. A credit of £69 for rent was re
corded in 1776. Subsequently the estate was con
fiscated and sold by the Commonwealth, the land
contained in it then consisting of ninety-six acres.
The purchaser was Arthur Cabot, of Salem, who
later sold it to Elbridge Gerry, Governor of Mas
sachusetts from 1810 to 1812, and Vice-President
of the United States under Madison, from 4 March,

6 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

1813, until his sudden death, 23 November, 1814,
a man personally liked, but politically detested by
his neighbors. In 1818 the estate, or rather the
homestead and some ten acres of land, was sold
by Gerry's heirs to the Rev. Charles Lowell, minis
ter of the West Church in Boston, who now made
it his home, establishing himself there with his
wife and five children. In the next year his
youngest child, James Russell Lowell, was born
in this house of many memories.

The Rev. Charles Lowell was the seventh in de
scent from Percival Lowell, or Lowle, as the name
sometimes was written, a well-to-do merchant of
Bristol, who, with children and grandchildren, a
goodly company, came from England in 1639,
and settled in Newbury, Mass.1 Charles Lowell's
father, the Hon. John Lowell, had led a distin
guished career as a lawyer and publicist ; and as
a member of the corporation of Harvard College,
and of learned societies having their headquar
ters in Boston, had been a conspicuous figure in
the community. One of his sons, Francis Cabot
Lowell, was the organizer of the industries on the
banks of the Merrimac which resulted in the
building of the city of Lowell. A son of Francis
Cabot Lowell was the originator of the Lowell
Institute, a centre of diffusing light in Boston.
Charles Lowell himself, springing from a stock
which, by inheritance and accumulation of intel
lectual forces, was a leading family in the compact
community of Boston, was endowed with a singu-
1 See Appendix A, The Lowell Ancestry.

\
ELMWOOD AND THE LOWELLS 7

larly pure and gracious spirit, and enjoyed an
unusual training for the life of rich service he was
to lead.

Graduated at Harvard in 1800, his bent was
toward the ministry ; but yielding to the wishes of
his father, he entered the law office of his elder
brother, and spent a year or more in the study of
the profession of law. His inclination, however,
was not changed, and his father withdrew his op
position and consented to a plan by which the
young man was to pursue his theological studies
in Edinburgh. He had three years of study and
travel abroad. He was a pupil of Sir David Brew-
ster and of Dugald Stewart, and kept up a friendly
acquaintance for many years with Stewart's later
colleague, Dr. Brown. He met Wilberforce, heard
Pitt, Fox, and Sheridan in the House of Com
mons, and, as his letters show, made eager incur
sions into the world of art.

He carried through all his experience a nature
of great simplicity and of unquestioning faith. His
son once wrote of him : " Nothing could shake my
beloved and honored father's trust in God and his
sincere piety ; " and his work as pastor of the
West Church in Boston, to which he was called
shortly after his return to America, was character
ized by a single-minded devotion which made him,
in the truest sense, a minister. All who have
recorded their recollections of him agree in their
impression of great distinction of manner and a
singularly musical voice. He had a way, it was
said, of uttering very familiar sentences, such as a

8 JAMKS KUSSKLL LOWKLL

quotation from tho Bible, with singular effective
ness, — u manner which was peculiarly his own.
After infirmities of sight and hearing had made
his appearance in tho pulpit rare, ho would still,
now aiul then, take part in tho service by reciting
in his melodious voice ono or more of tho hymns
— ho Unow by hoart all in tho book. Kmerson
said of him that ho was tho most eloquent extem
poraneous sj>oakor ho hail ovor hoard. Ho hail
tho natural gift of spoooh, but until ono read by
himsolf some sormon to whioh ho had listened
with delight, ho would scarcely bo aware that tho
spoil lay in tho puro tones of tho voioo that uttorod
it.1

Abovo all, ho was tho parson, making his powors
toll loss in preaching than in tho incessant oaro
ami onro of souls. In Edinburgh ho had stiuliod
modioino as woll as theology, and, as his ohuroh
stood on tho border of a distriot whioh was forlorn
and unwholesome. Or. Lowell was constantly ex
tending tho jurisdiction of his paroohial authority,
carrying tho gospol in ono hand and broad and
pills in tho other. Ho know every child in his

1 In lS.Vi Or. Lowell contemplated tho publication of a volume
of Hortuo-iM. tiiul his tlum ;».<wo,-i.ito, Or. Hartol, wr\>t«> privately to
th«> »v>u. ilisoi>urt»j;iu^: tho vviitur«<. H«» luul not tho hoart opvuly
to op)Hv<o l>r, l.ovvoll. " I know," ho writes, " I oau trust you to
wuU'r*t;«td mo fully whou I say it is my persuasion ami that of
truo aiul strong friotuls of your fathor in tho |>arUh. that a volumo
iHiuUl uovor ovortako his actual reputation, that what is best iu
him, his voice, his Kx»k, his mauner, Mmsr{f\ cannot IH> priutovl,
»«ul that his peculiar plory is ono that shouUl warwly IK> touched
>vith ink." There A'\A appear, however, in 1S,V> a volumo by l>r.
Li»wvll, entitled >Vr/wDH«

fcL* WOOD A.VI> Tllf: UfWKLlA

ar^i >'. aa h* '.*..'••], Kb ministry waft an
fane, IB wa* h«rame hfe wa* too lrm,*y wi'nh
th/r ft***!* of other* ftvcrr to p*rpkx hi
r hi* f>wu (zatfwt. lw\f*?\. h WAA the

of C'amf/rwlg^, f^>r mil^s* away,

p^^lj irjflrtAti^r^
in famtl tha& torrwo

worW a*yr<oa/!T aw! h* sfj'x^I in an amiable r^Uf.I

t/* tfcafe .vrff 'rytftt>F*-sL, wxiitffrtJiJcAf', worW of i

v* lia/f lj*rg»ft wifth-m if, alr^a/ly tftft agi-

mawy

»h rank l*a/rk wh^rt «6 b«s3earfw> a
diiftg wi&h tt: £h#r irrttirw^ f^xr thy;
an <*rtabiwh<vi ofiwr waA ^tr^mg,

whkrh h* SAW rising wa* iu> hirw ** haf*h.

. nrtfJ&nMkhlf-,. iiTwrhmtian,'"' arwl it
hw gtmtlf-.. <rt<\f-:fij nata-fft. Frowin th^
nook of Elmwood, K^ toofe^i out on a

iontng worM, &m6 hb own part ^^rn^ci l/»
it if at him, Hft ha/i hi* pamht vkfc

an/! p«s/i -r h* clrorft f/^ town
in hi.* f:t&l *+. r// ann^T^I r,hvr i»f*itm^* of ^tA Hutorv
cal So^H^tT, of whi/rh h* wa.* l^>n^ wx*X&ijt awi
f,h* <rhvrk*ti.* arwi ^ro^win^ fthtng:* in h-k
ir* of K. ;;.«'•»]. T&* sail 4o6» wiaefc

10 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

murmur about the old house were planted by him.
He brought to the solution of the new problems
which were vexing men the calm religious phi
losophy which had solved any doubts he may have
had, and if his equanimity was disturbed he
righted himself always with a cheerful optimistic
piety. One of his parish who had grown to woman
hood under his eye, and had married, made up her
mind to take a stand in some reform as a public
speaker, and from his chamber at Elmwood — for
this was late in his life, when he was in retirement
— he sent for her to come to him.

" I shall never forget his greeting," she wrote
long after. " As I opened the chamber door he
rose from the old easy-chair, and standing erect,
cried out : ' Child ! my child ! what is this I hear ?
Why are you talking to the whole world ? ' He
was clothed in a long white flannel dressing-gown,
with a short shoulder cape hardly reaching to his
belt. His was no longer the piercing expression,
aggressive to a degree, that Harding has portrayed.
The curling locks that gave individuality to his
forehead had been cut away, the gentle influence
of a submissive spirit had impressed itself upon his
features. In a moment I was seated at his feet,
and then came a long and intimate talk of why and
when and wherefore, which ended in a short prayer
with his hand upon my head, and the words, ' Now
promise me that you will never enter the desk with
out first seeking God's blessing ! ' I answered only
by a look." i

1 Alongside, by Mrs. Caroline H. Dall. Privately printed.

Rev. Charles Lowell

12 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

and temperament, together with a suggestion of
that occult power which haunts the people of the
Orkney Isles. Whether or no Mrs. Lowell had, as
was sometimes said, the faculty of second sight,
she certainly had that love of ballads and delight
in singing and reciting them which imparts a wild
flower fragrance to the mind ; l and her romantic
nature may easily be reckoned as the brooding
place of fancies which lived again in the poetic
genius of her son. She had been bred in the Epis
copal Church, and that may possibly have had its
influence in the determination of her son Robert's
vocation, but in marrying Dr. Lowell she must
have found much common ground with one who
always resolutely refused to be identified with a
sect almost local in its bounds. "• I have adopted,"
he wrote in 1855, " no other religious creed than
the Bible, and no other name than Christian as
denoting my religious faith." The few letters from
Mrs. Lowell's pen which remain contain messages
of endearment that flutter about the head of her
" Babie Jammie," as she called him, and betray
a tremulous nature, anxious with pride and fond
perplexity.

The companionship of the elder Lowells began
in a happy manner in their childhood. The grand
father of Charles Lowell was the Rev. John Lowell,
of Newburyport, who was twice married. His

l In a review of the Book of British Ballads in The Pioneer,
Lowell says : " And the dear ' Annie of Lochroyan,' too, made
thrice dear to us by the often hearing' it from lips that gave an
original beauty of their own to whatever they recited."

ELMWOOD AND THE LOWELLS 13

widow continued to make her home in Newbury-
port after her husband's death, but when her hus
band's son, John Lowell, the lawyer and jurist,
left the place and established himself in Boston,
she also left the town and went to live in Ports
mouth near her niece, Mrs. Brackett. Mrs. Lowell
had been John Lowell's mother since his boy
hood, and after the manner so common in New
England households the titular grandmother ruled
serenely without being subjected to nice distinc
tions. Charles Lowell, thus, when a boy, was a
frequent visitor at his grandmother's Portsmouth
home, and his playmate was his grandmother's
great-niece, Harriet Brackett Spence. The inti
macy deepened and before Charles Lowell sailed
for Europe a betrothal had taken place.

There were three sons and two daughters when
James Russell,1 the youngest in this family, was
born. Charles was between eleven and twelve,
Rebecca ten, Mary a little over eight, William be
tween five and six, and Robert2 between two and

1 He was named after his father's maternal g-randf ather, Judge
James Russell, of Charlestown.

- Robert Traill Spence Lowell was graduated at Harvard Col
lege in 1833. He became an Episcopal clergyman in 1842, went
shortly after as a missionary to Newfoundland, had a parish later
in New Jersey, then took the headmastership of S. Mark's School,
Southborough, Mass., and finally was called to the chair of Latin
language and literature in Union College. He remained in Sche-
nectady till his death, 12 September, 1891, just a month after the
death of his younger brother. He had a distinct literary gift, and
published several books, which were the outcome of his life in its
varied scenes. The New Priest in Conception Bay has vivid pic
tures of Newfoundland, and contains one character, Elnathau

14 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

three. All these lived to maturity, excepting Wil
liam, who died when James was four years old.
Charles by his seniority was the mentor and guide
of his younger brother during his adolescence,
especially when their father was absent, as he was
once for a journey in Europe, but Mary l was the
sister to whom he was especially committed in his
childhood. She was his little nurse, and as her
own love of poetry came early, she was wont to
read him to sleep, when he took his daily nap, from
Spenser,2 and she used to relate in after years how

Bangs, who is as racy a Yankee in his own way as Hosea Biglow
himself. The book unfortunately was published by Phillips &
Sampson just as Mr. Phillips died and the firm went into bank
ruptcy, and lost thus the advantage of a good start. It was
revived a good many years later, but never enjoyed the vogue
it might have had. Mr. Lowell's experiences at S. Mark's lay
behind a story for schoolboys, Antony lirade, and his life in
Schenectady suggested A Story or Two from an Old Dutch Town.
He published also Fresh Hearts that Failed Three Thousand Years
Ago, and Other Poems, a book which his brother had the pleasure
of reviewing in the Atlantic. His best known poem, " The Relief
of Lucknow," appeared also in the Atlantic, under his brother's
editorship.

1 Mary Traill Spence Lowell was born 3 December, 1810, was
married to Samuel Raymond Putnam, 25 April, 1832, and died in
Boston, 1 June, 1898. She was a woman of intellectual power,
and literary accomplishment. She chose to write anonymously,
but the books she wrote, Records of an Obscure Man, The Tragedy
of Errors, Fifteen Days, and The Tragedy of Success, though re
mote from the current of popular taste in her day, not only dis
close a most thoughtful nature, and one profoundly interested in
great subjects of racial and philosophical moment, but not infre
quently are exceedingly felicitous in expression.

2 In a lecture on Spenser, given in 1856. Lowell said, " The
Faery Queene was the first poem I ever read, and I had no sus
picion of any double meaning in it."

ELMWOOD AND THE LOWELLS 15

hard the little boy found it to go to sleep under
the charm of the stories, yet how firmly nature
closed his eyes at last.

His own recorded recollections of childhood are
not many, yet as far back as he could remember
he was visited by visions night and day. An oft-
recurring dream was of having the earth put into
his hand like an orange. Dr. Weir Mitchell notes
that Lowell told him he had since boyhood been
subject to visions, which appeared usually in the
evening. Commonly he saw a figure in mediaeval
costume which kept on one side of him, — perhaps
an outcome of his early familiarity with Spenser
and Shakespeare. Most of all in his memories of
childhood he recalled vividly the contact with na
ture in the enchanted realm of Elmwood, and the
free country into which it passed easily. With
the eye of a hawk he spied all the movements in
that wide domain, and brooded over the lightest
stir with an unconscious delight which was the
presage of the poet in him. " The balancing of a
yellow butterfly over a thistle broom was spiritual
food and lodging for a whole forenoon."

Indeed, there could scarcely have been a better
nesting-place for one who was all his life long to
love the animation of nature and to portray in
verse and prose its homely and friendly aspects
rather than its large, solemn, or expansive scenes.
In after life, especially when away from home, he
recurred to his childish experiences in a tone which
had the plaint of homesickness. From the upper
windows of the house — that tower of enchantment

16 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

for many a child — he could see a long curve of
the Charles, the wide marshes beyond the river,
and the fields which lay between Elmwood and the
village of Cambridge. Within the place itself were
the rosebushes and asters, the heavy headed goat's-
beard, the lilac bushes and syringas which bordered
the path from the door to what his father, in New
England phrase, called the avenue, and which later
became formally Elmwood Avenue ; but chiefest
were the shag-bark trees, the pines, the horse-chest
nuts, and the elms, a young growth in part in his
childhood, for his father took delight in giving
this permanence to the home ; and the boy himself
caught the fancy, for when he was fifty-six years
old he rejoiced in the huge stack of shade cast for
him by a horse-chestnut, whose seed he had planted
more than fifty years before. And in trees and
bushes sang the birds that were to be his compan
ions through life. Over the buttercups whistled
the orioles ; and bobolinks, catbirds, linnets, and
robins were to teach him notes, —

The Aladdin's trap-door of the past to lift."

In those days bank swallows frequented the cliff
of the gravel pit by the river, and Lowell remem
bered how his father would lead him out to see the
barn swallows, which had been flying in and out of
the mows, gather on the roof before their yearly
migration. " I learned," he wrote long after, —

" I learned all weather-signs of day or night ;
No bird but I could name him by his flight,
No distant tree but by his shape was known,
Or, near at hand, by leaf or bark alone.

ELMWOOD AND THE LOWELLS 17

This learning won by loving looks I hived

As sweeter lore than all from books derived." 1

When he was not far away from his childhood,
and in a time of great sensitiveness, he wrote : " I
never shall forget the blind despair of a poor little
humming-bird which flew through the open win
dow of the nursery where I was playing when a
child. I knew him at once, for the same gay-
vested messenger from Fairy -land, whom I had
often watched disputing with the elvish bees the
treasures of the honeysuckle by the doorstep. His
imprisoned agony scarce equalled my own ; and
the slender streaks of blood, which his innocent,
frenzied suicide left upon the ceiling, were more
terrible to me than the red witness which Rizzio
left on the stair at Holyrood to cry out against his
murderers." 2

If we may trust the confession in " The Cathe
dral " as personal and not dramatic, Lowell was
singularly sensitive in childhood to those subtle
stirrings of nature which give eternity to single
moments, and create impressions which are indeli
ble but never repeated.

" The fleeting relish at sensation's brim
Had in it the best ferment of the wine."

A spring morning which witnessed the sudden
miracle of regeneration ; an hour of summer, when
he sat dappled with sunshine, in a cherry-tree ; a
day in autumn, when the falling leaves moved as
an accompaniment to his thought ; the creaking of

1 " An Epistle to George William Curtis," 1874.

2 Conversations on Some of the Old Potts, pp. 170, 171.

18 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

the snow beneath his feet, when the familiar world
was transformed as in a vision to a polar soli
tude : —

" Instant the candid chambers of my brain
Were painted with these sovran images ;
And later visions seem but copies pale
From those unfading frescos of the past,
Which I, young savage, in my age of flint,
Gazed at, and dimly felt a power in me
Parted from Nature by the joy in her
That doubtfully revealed me to myself."

CHAPTER II

SCHOOL AND COLLEGE
1826-1838

THE outer world came early to the notice of
Lowell in his garden enclosure. " I remember,"
he writes on the fourth of July, 1876, " how, fifty
years ago to-day, I, perched in a great ox-heart
cherry-tree, long ago turned to mould, saw my
father come home with the news of John Adams's
death." Two or three journeys also carried him
out into the world in his early boyhood. He re
membered going to Portsmouth in his seventh year,
for the visit was impressed on his memory by the
startling effect produced by a skeleton which he
confronted when he opened a long red chest in Dr.
Brackett's house ; and it was the next year that his
father took him to Washington and carried him
out to Alexandria, where he spent some days with
the Carroll family, who were connections on his
mother's side, and whence he made an excursion
to Mount Vernon. It all came back to him fifty-
nine years later when he took his grandson to the
same shrine ; he went straight to the key of the
Bastile and to the honey-locusts in the garden.

The rambles, too, to Beaver Brook and the
Waverley Oaks, in the country within easy stroll

20 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

of Elmwood, were extended when he climbed into
the chaise with his father and drove off to neigh
boring parishes at such times as Dr. Lowell ex
changed with his brother ministers. In those little
journeys he had an opportunity to see the lingering
reverence still paid to the minister, when boys
doffed their hats and girls dropped a curtsy by
the roadside as his father passed by. These ex
changes drew Dr. Lowell and his little son as
far as Portsmouth on the east and Northampton
on the west. " I can conceive," says Lowell, " of
nothing more delightful than those slow summer
journeys through leafy lanes and over the stony
hills, where we always got out and walked. In
that way I think I gained a more intimate relation
with what we may call pristine New England than
has fallen to the fortune of most men of my age." 1
Thirty years after these experiences he could give
this graphic report of the contests he was wont
to witness in the village choir : —

" Sometimes two ancient men, through glasses dim,
In age's treble deaconed off the hymn,
Paused o'er long words and then with breathless pace
Went down a slope of short ones at a race,
While who could sing and who could not, but would,
Rushed helter-skelter after as they could.
Well I remember how their faces shone,
Safe through some snare like Re-sig-na-ti-on,
And how some graceless youth would mock the tones
Of Deacdn Jarvis or of Deacon Jones :
In towns ambitious of more cultured strains,
The gruff bass-viol told its inward pains
As some enthusiast, deaf to catgut's woe,

1 Said at the commemoration of the one hundred and fiftieth
anniversary of the foundation of the West Church, Boston, 1887.

SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 21

Rasped its bare nerves with torture-resined bow ;

Hard-by another, with strained eyeballs set,

Blew devious discord through his clarinet,

And the one fiddle, that was wont to seek

In secular tunes its living all the week,

Blind to the leader's oft-repeated glance

Mixed up the psalm-tune with a country dance." 1

More frequent journeys were those which he and
his brothers and sisters invented for themselves by
naming1 different parts of Elmwood after cities of
the world and spending thus with their imagination
the small geographical earnings of the schoolroom.

The first school which the boy attended was a
dame school, which appears to have been some
where not far from the river in the neighborhood
of what is now Brattle Square. Once in verse and
once in prose Lowell recorded his childish expe
rience in and out of this primary school. In his
introduction to " The Biglow Papers," first series,
is a fragment beginning —

" Propped on the marsh, a dwelling now, I see
The humble school-house of my A, B, C ; "

and in his " New England Two Centuries Ago "
there is a passage often read and quoted, which is
a faithful picture of the author's life within and
without one of the " martello towers that protect
our coast," but he does not add the personal touch
of his own return from school, whistling as he came
in sight of his home as a signal to the mother
watching for him. A bit of childish sport may
be added from an omitted extract from the same
fragmentary poem, since it brings to view two of
Lowell's boy companions : —

1 The Power of Sound : a rhymed lecture, pp. 22, 2'-}.

22 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

" Where Felton puns in English or in Greek,
And shakes with laughter till the timbers creak,
The ' Idle Man ' once lived ; the man I knew,
The author dwelt beyond my boyish view.
There once, the college butler aided, too,
My pony through his own front door he drew,
I on her back, and strove with winning airs
To coax my shaggy Shetlander upstairs ;
Rejected hospitality ! the more
He tugged in front, she backed toward the dpor.
Had oats been offered, she had climbed at least
Up to the garret, canny Scottish beast.
Across the way, where once an Indian stood
O'er Winthrop's door, carved horribly in wood,
On the green duck-pond's sea, where water fails
In droughty times, replenished then with pails,
Richard the Second from their moorings cast
His shingle fleets, and served before the mast,
While Ned and I consigned a well-culled store
Of choicest pebbles for the other shore.
Then walked at leisure to the antipodes,
Changing en route to Chinese consignees."

Both Richard and Edmund Dana were his
neighbors and friends, and with these early play
mates should be named William Story. To him,
as to one who had journeyed with him " through
the green secluded valley of boyhood," he addressed
his " Cambridge Thirty Years Ago." Story and
the two Higginsons, Thatcher and Thomas Went-
worth, were the only day scholars with Lowell at
the boarding-school, kept by Mr. William Wells, to
which Lowell was sent to be prepared for entrance
to college. Mr. Wells was an Englishman, who
brought with him to this country attainments in
scholarship which were disclosed in the making of a
simple Latin grammar and in an edition of Tacitus.

SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 23

He engaged in publishing under the firm name of
Wells & Lilly, but meeting with reverses, he opened
a classical school in the old Fayerweather house in
Cambridge. He was a man of robust and master
ful habit, who kept up the English tradition of
the rattan in school and manly sport out of doors.
The school hud its gentler side in the person of
Mrs. Wells, to whom Lowell sent a copy of " The
Vision of Sir Lauiifal " in 1866, with the words :
" Will you please me by accepting this little book
in memory of your constant kindness to a naughty
little cub of a schoolboy more than thirty years
ago ? I hope you will forget his ill deserts as faith
fully as he remembers how much he owes you."

It was at the hands of Mr. Wells that Lowell
received that severe drilling in Latin which was
one of the traditions of English scholarship trans
ported to New England by the early clergy, and
reenforced from time to time by newcomers from
England like Mr. Wells, elegant scholars like Mr.
Dixwell, and stern disciplinarians like Dr. Francis
Gardner, the latter two long holding the Boston
Latin School fast bound to the old ways. Mr.
George Ticknor Curtis, who was sixteen years old
when Lowell was ten, at Mr. Wells's school, in a
reminiscence of that period says : " Mr. Wells
always heard a recitation with the book in his left
hand and a rattan in his right, and if the boy made
a false quantity or did not know the meaning of a
word, down came the rattan on his head. But this
chastisement was never ministered to me or to
' Jemmy Lowell.' Not to me, because I was too old

24 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

for it, and not to him because he was too young."
With his quickness of mind and linguistic agility,
Lowell evidently acquired in school rather than in
college a familiarity with Latin forms, to judge by
the ease with which he handled the language later
in mock heroics ; his early letters, too, are sprin
kled with Latin phrases, the well worn coin of the
realm, it is true, but always jingling in his pocket.

The schoolroom to an imaginative boy is a start
ing point for mental rambles. Lowell studied the
rime on the window panes as well as his Latin
verses. From his readings with his elder sister,
and out of his own fertile imagination, he told or
made up stories for his young comrades. T. W.
Higginson, recalling Lowell and Story, remembers
" treading close behind them once, as they dis
cussed Spenser's ' Faerie Queene,' which they had
been reading, and which led us younger boys to
christen a favorite play-place ' the Bower of Bliss.' "
Dr. Samuel Eliot, who was one of Mr. Wells's
pupils, was also one of the small boys who listened
to Lowell's imaginative tales. " I remember no
thing of them," he told Dr. Hale, "except one,
which rejoiced in the central interest of a trap in
the playground, which opened to subterranean mar
vels of various kinds."

" I can conceive of no healthier reading for a
boy, or girl either, than Scott's novels," says
Lowell, and he had the good fortune to be intro
duced early to Scott, and to read him as a contem
porary. When he was nine his mother gave him,
one can guess with what Scottish eagerness, the

SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 25

" Tales of a Grandfather," which had just been
published ; and the then great event of American
history was not so remote but that the freckle-faced
boy who lived in a house once a Tory's, then a sol
dier's hospital, and then the home of a governor of
the commonwealth and vice-president of the United
States, would have lively reminders of it in the
veterans who turned out at muster, and in the rude
village drama of the " Cornwallis." l

Yet, as Lowell himself reminds us, the Cam
bridge of his boyhood, besides possessing the com
mon characteristics of New England towns, had its
special flavor from the presence there of the oldest
college of New England. Like the Cambridge
boys of to-day, he hovered about the skirts of Alma
Mater, took in, year by year, the entertainment
offered by the college at its annual Commencement
festival, — a greater raree-show then than now, —
and made the acquaintance of the queer misshapen
minds that by some occult law of nature always
seem to be found in the shade of a college town, as
if the " Muses' factories " must necessarily have
their refuse heaps not far away. A boy who grows
up in a college town, especially when the commu
nity and the town are somewhat isolated, hardly
knows the wonder and gravity which assail one who
comes up to college from a distant home. In Low-

1 " 'T is near midnight, and I hear a bass-drum, kettle-drum
and fife in the distance, playing- the dear old boongalang tune of
my earliest days, the very one to which General Gage marched out
of Boston. It is delightful. I think it is the noise Wagner is
always trying to make and failing." — J. R. L. to C. E. Norton,
16 April, 1889.

26 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

ell's youth Harvard College and Cambridge town
were singularly isolated in spite of their geogra
phical nearness to Boston. Once an hour a long
omnibus, and twice an hour a short one, jogged
back and forth between the village and the city,
picking up passengers in a leisurely fashion, and
going longer or shorter distances from the college
yard, according to the importunity of the passenger
or the good-nature of the driver. An hourly stage
to the city meant much deliberation in making the
journey, and Cambridge was by no means the bed
chamber for city merchants and professional men
which it has since become.

When Lowell entered Harvard from Mr. Wells's
school in 1834, the college was surrounded by
houses and gardens which marked almost the bounds
of the town as one went toward Boston. The col
lege itself was within a straggling enclosure still
known by the homely name of the Yard, and occu
pied seven buildings therein ; the library was in
Harvard Hall, for Gore Hall was not begun till
just as Lowell was graduating. The chapel was a
dignified apartment of University Hall, designed
by the architect Charles Bulfinch, who left his mark
in Boston and its neighborhood upon buildings
which stand in serene reproof of much later archi
tecture. In the chapel also were held the academic
functions, one of which, Exhibition Day, was ob
served three times a year ; on two of these occa
sions the Governor of the Commonwealth attended,
and on all of them the President of the college in
his academic dress, the Fellows, the Overseers, and

SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 27

the Faculty marched to the chapel with ceremony,
there to listen, along with an indulgent crowd of
parents and friends, to the youthful speakers, who
discoursed in Latin or in English, but were always
introduced in Latin.

During Lowell's college course there were only
about two hundred and twenty undergraduates, his
own class entering with sixty-eight members and
graduating with sixty-five ; the whole list of the
faculty, including the schools of law, divinity, and
medicine, did not exceed thirty-four, and not half
of these constituted the college faculty proper.
But among them were names known then and later
beyond the college enclosure. Felton was profes
sor of Greek, Peirce of mathematics, and Ticknor
of modern languages, to be succeeded, when Lowell
was nearly through his college course, by Longfel
low. Francis Sales, graphically set off by Lowell
in his " Cambridge Thirty Years Ago," was instruc-
ter [sic] in French and Spanish, and Pietro Bachi
in Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. The president
of the college was Josiah Quincy, and when thirty
years later Lowell reviewed his friend Edmund
Quincy's life of his father, in the article entitled
" A Great Public Character," he referred with a
fine note of sincere feeling to the association with
him which he bore away from his college days, in a
passage which reflects a little of Lowell as well as
pictures the figure of the president.

" Mr. Quincy had many qualities calculated to
win him favor with the young, — that one above
all which is sure to do it, indomitable pluck. With

28 JAMES RUSSELL LOAVELL

him the dignity was in the man, not in the office.
He had some of those little oddities, too, which
afford amusement without contempt, and which
rather tend to heighten than diminish personal at
tachment to superiors in station. His punctuality
at prayers, and in dropping asleep there, his for-
getfulness of names, his singular inability to make
even the shortest off-hand speech to the students,
— all the more singular in a practised orator, —
his occasional absorption of mind, leading him to
hand you his sand-box instead of the leave of ab
sence he had just dried with it, — the old-fashioned
courtesy of his ' Sir, your servant,' as he bowed you
out of his study, — all tended to make him popular.
He had also a little of what is somewhat contradic
torily called dry humor, not without influence in
his relations with the students. In taking leave of
the graduating class, he was in the habit of paying
them whatever honest compliment he could. Who,
of a certain year which shall be nameless, will ever
forget the gravity with which he assured them that
they were ' the best-dressed class that had passed
through college during his administration ' ? How
sincerely kind he was, how considerate of youthful
levity, will always be gratefully remembered by
whoever had occasion to experience it."

The change from school to college, as I have in
timated, was not such as to strike very deeply into
the boy's consciousness. He continued for a while
to live at his father's house, a mile away from the
Yard, though he had a room of his own nearer,
at Mr. Hancock's in Church Street, and in the

SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 29

latter part of his course lived there altogether.
Going to college, thus, was very much like going
to school as he had always done. The college
methods were not markedly different from those of
a preparatory school. There were lessons to learn
and recite ; the text-book was the rule, and the
fixed curriculum suggested no break from the ordi
nary course of formal instruction. Except in the
senior year, there was a steady attention to Greek,
Latin, and mathematics. In the first year Tytler's
History was studied ; in the second year English
grammar and modern languages were added ; in
the third year, besides Greek and Latin and mod
ern languages, Paley's Evidences, Butler's Ana
logy, and chemistry appeared on the list, and
themes and forensics were introduced. In the
senior year the ancient languages were dropped,
and natural philosophy, intellectual philosophy,
astronomy, and political economy took their place,
with lectures on rhetoric, criticism, theology, Story
on the Constitution of the United States, miner
alogy, and anatomy — a somewhat confused jumble
on paper in the catalogue of the time, which it is
to be hoped was reduced to some sort of order,
though it looks as if the senior were suddenly re
leased from too monotonous a course and bidden
take a rapid survey of a wide range of intellectual
pursuits.

In his school days Lowell had been under the
close surveillance given to boys, and the partial
freedom of college life brought with it a little more
sense of personal rights, but throughout the four

30 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

years he was boyish, frolicsome, very immature in
expression, and disposed, in a fitful fashion, to as
sert an independence of authority. He won a " de-
tur " in his sophomore year, and in a public exhibi
tion in the first term of his senior year he took part
in a conference bearing the labored title : " Ancient
Epics, considered as Pictures of Manners, as Proofs
of Genius, or as Sources of Entertainment," but
both in his sophomore and senior years he was at
first privately and then publicly admonished for
excessive absence from recitations and for general
negligence in themes, forensics, and recitations.
There was enough of the boy left in him at the
beginning of his senior year to require the fine of a
dollar for cutting seats in the recitation room ; and
the college discipline of the day frowned on Lowell
as on others for wearing a brown coat on Sunday.
It is difficult for one scanning the records of the
faculty at that time to avoid a feeling of commiser
ation for these excellent gentlemen and scholars
sitting, as if they were boarding-school masters,
in serious consultation over the pranks and petty
insubordination of a parcel of boys.

Meanwhile in his own fashion Lowell was stum
bling on his way, gradually finding himself. He
was a reader, as we have seen, before he went to
college, and he continued to find his delight in
books. "A college training," he once said, "is an
excellent thing ; but after all, the better part of
every man's education is that which he gives him
self," l and in college he was following, without

1 " Books and Libraries " in Literary and Political Addresses,
Works, vi. 83.

SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 31

much reflection, the instincts of his nature, both
as regards his reading- and his writing. His let
ters show him a schoolboy when attending to the
enforced tasks of the college, with occasional out
breaks of enthusiasm for the more distinctly lit
erary studies, but somewhat of an independent
voyager when launched on the waters of general
literature.

It was in the large leisure of his college days
that he formed an acquaintance which ripened into
intimacy with the great writers and with those sec
ondary lights that often suit better the ordinary
inood. " I was first directed to Lanclor's works,"
he says, in 1888, when introducing some letters of
Landor to the readers of his own day, "by hearing
how much store Emerson set by them. I grew
acquainted with them fifty years ago in one of
those arched alcoves in the old college library in
Harvard Hall, which so pleasantly secluded with
out wholly isolating the student. That footsteps
should pass across the mouth of his Aladdin's
Cave, or even enter it in search of treasure, so
far from disturbing only deepened his sense of pos
session. These faint rumors of the world he had
left served but as a pleasant reminder that he
was the privileged denizen of another beyond ' the
flaming bounds of space and time.' There, with
my book lying at ease and in the expansion of in
timacy on the broad window-shelf, shifting my cell
from north to south with the season, I made friend
ships, that have lasted me for life, with Dodsley's
'Old Plays,' with Cotton's 'Montaigne,' with Hak-

32 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

luyt's ' Voyages,' among others that were not in
my father's library. It was the merest browsing,
no doubt, as Johnson called it, but how delightful
it was ! " 1

The record of books withdrawn by Lowell from
the college library during his four years' residence
would of course furnish a very incomplete account
of his reading, since, as intimated above, he had his
father's well-stocked shelves, and access apparently
to the alcoves of Harvard Hall. The record, never
theless, is interesting as showing the range and the
drift of his reading. Some of this reading is an
cillary to his task work, but much is simply the
gratification of an expanding taste, and covers
such diverse works as Terence, Hume, the Antho-
logia Grseca, Smollett, Hakluyt, Boileau, Scott,
and Southey. It is noticeable that as his college
course proceeded the emphasis was laid on the
greater English literature.

Nor was he without the excellent ambition to
collect a library of his own. "It -is just fifty-one
years ago," he said 7 May, 1885, when unveiling
the bust of Coleridge in Westminster Abbey,
" that I became the possessor of an American re
print of Galignani's edition of Coleridge, Shelley,
and Keats in one volume. It was a pirated book,
and I trust I may be pardoned for the delight
I had in it." 2 His letters to his college friends
during these years contain frequent references to
the purchases of books he had made and the gifts

1 Latest Literary Essays and Addresses, p. 43.

2 Literary and Political Addresses, pp. 69, 70.

SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 33

from his family which he prized. He has been
given a beautiful edition of Milton, which he had
looked forward to buying ; he has been purchas
ing Samuel Butler and Beattie ; a new edition of
Shakespeare has been announced, which he means
to buy if he can afford it ; he has had a " detur "
of Akenside ; he has laid his hands on a " very
pretty edition of Cowper ; " and his frequent quo
tations from the poets show the easy familiarity he
had won in his reading.

Besides his continued friendship with Story and
other neighbors' sons, Lowell formed new alliances
among his college mates, and in his correspond
ence with two of them in this period he discloses
something of his character and tastes. One of
these friends, W. H. Shackford, was his senior by
two or three years, and Lowell's letters to him
show the boy's side turned toward one whom he
regarded with the friendly reverence which sixteen
pays to nineteen. On his part, Shackford seems
to have taken a violent fancy to Lowell, to have
made indeed the first overtures of friendship. To
this sager companion, who was a senior when
Lowell was a freshman, he reveals his more studi
ous side. Shackford left college to teach at Phil
lips Exeter Academy, and Lowell wrote to him
from Cambridge and Boston, not much in the way
of college gossip, but of his own studies, the trea
sures he picked up at book-stores or auctions, his
plans for reading and travel, and brief comments
on his instructors. Through the correspondence
runs an affectionate current, an almost lover-like

34 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

tone of self-exculpation, the warm feeling of a boy
toward his mentor, and an impulse to make him
somewhat of a confessor.1

The earliest of these letters was written in the
middle of July, 1835, when Shackford had gone to
Portsmouth. It was a hasty shot fired after his
departing friend to assure him of his affection,
written under stress of headache from his brother's
office, and was followed the same day by a longer
letter. " When I wrote to you this morning," he
says, " I was laboring under three very bad com
plaints enumerated in my other letter. I was then
at my brother's office. I am now at home, sitting
by an open window, with my coat off, my stock
do., with Coleridge's works before me wherewith
to consume the rest of the day, and also as cool as
a cucumber. Shack, if you are a victim to any
other disease, and are lying tossing with pain under
some physician's prescription (such, for instance,
as the pleasing draught concocted by Wm. Rufus,
or the Red King, composed of the following truly
delectable compounds, viz., ' rue, tansy, horehound,
coltsfoot, hyssop, and camomile flowers, farther
enriched by a handful of earthworms, half a dozen
wood lice and four centipedes '), if, I say, you
labor under all these misfortunes, devoutly thank
your more fav'ring stars, that you are not the
yawning victim of ennui, a disease which vEscu-
lapius himself could n't cure, and which I there
fore humbly opine to have been the disease of

1 Mr. Shackford did not live to continue his friendship with
Lowell. He died in 1842.

SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 35

Achilles. ... I hope you '11 be amused with this
epistle (if perchance you are able to read it). But
the fact is I can't write anything serious to save
my life. Answer this the very day you get it. ..."
At the end of the summer when more letters had
passed between them, Lowell returned to his col
lege work, and wrote from Cambridge a long letter
dated 9 October, 1835, in reply to one long de
layed. " My dearest friend," he writes, " I am
rejoiced that you have broken the long silence that
existed between us, not because I should not have
written to you first, but because it shows that you
were not grievously offended with me. I willingly
confess myself to blame, but not in so great a
degree as you may suppose. I did go to the White
Mountains, and while travelling was not offended
(do not use any stronger term) by not receiving
any letters from you ; on the contrary I expected
none, for how could you have any knowledge of
my * whereabouts ' unless I wrote to you as I went
along and told you where to direct? This I did
not do, nor did I write any letters on my journey
except one which I was obliged to write to Bob
because I promised him I would. After I got home
I was taken sick and kept my bed a week without
being able to sleep most of the time on account of
a raging sick headache which hardly allowed me to
move. The day I saw you was the third time I had
been out. I did go down, however, three times to
see you, but could not find you, or saw you walking
with somebody I did not know, and then I did not
like to speak to you. Did you or could you think

36 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

that I would forfeit your friendship, the most pre
cious (because I believe it to be the truest) I ever
enjoyed, because you did not find it convenient to
write to me ? I hope you will not think that I say
all this because I am ashamed to treat you coldly,
or not to answer you. I am sure of one thing, that
I have no such opinion of you. Your letter, Shack,
was a delight to me (though I am not ashamed to
confess that it [made] me cry). . . .

" I like Prof. Channing very much indeed, in
asmuch as I sit where I can see his marks, and
he has given me an 8 every recitation this term
except once, and then he gave me 7. I went up to
ask him something so as to see whether I was not
mistaken (as he makes a 6 something like his 8's)
and I found on the paper exactly what I expected.
I have written one theme and got but two marks
on the margin, one for a change required in the
sentence, and another was a straight line drawn
under the word ' to,' and also marked on the mar
gin. Tell me whether you think this is good, as
you have experienced. I study quite hard this
term. I get on in German astonishingly; it comes
quite easy to me now. ... I have written the
longest letter I ever wrote in my life. I translated
an ode of Horace into poetry the other day, and it
was pretty good. Mathematics are my only ene
mies now. ... I hope I may subscribe myself your
dear friend."

A month later he writes his friend a lively
account of a town and gown row, and notes his
progress in reading Shakespeare. " I was sur-

SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 37

prised on looking over Shakespeare to find that I
had read all his plays but two or three, among
them ' Hamlet.' Only think, I have n't read 'Ham
let.' I will go at it instanter."

At the beginning of 1836, on returning to col
lege after the holidays, he writes with a boyish
bibliomaniac enthusiasm of the Milton and Cole
ridge which had been given him, and passes into
comment on the books he is reading and those he
means to buy. He grows more literary and politi
cal in the subjects of his letters, disclosing already
not only a warm interest in public affairs, but a
generous judgment. " I suppose you heard of the
Seminoles massacring, as it is called, those com
panies of American troops. I think they are in
the right of it ; by ' they ' I mean the Seminoles.
Not much danger of war with France now." Then
follows an odd jumble of frank confessions of his
likes and dislikes for his fellows, and his boyish
passions, with a return to his hunt for books in
special editions.

His letter of 22 April, 1836, is taken up with a
long discussion in a semi-philological vein of love
and friendship, but what would strike a reader of
these letters most is the distinct change which now
takes place in the handwriting, which has passed
from a not always neat copy-book hand to one
which suggests the delicacy of the hand he after
ward wrote, though not its elegance; it is still
constrained with the air of being the result of close
attention. These gradual changes in style of hand
writing rarely fail to mark a maturing of character,

38 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

and it is interesting to observe, in Lowell's case,
how they register a long period of vacillation and
immaturity.

There is a gap of nearly a year in this correspond
ence as preserved, and the next letter, under date
of 26 February, 1837, is filled with extracts from
a long poem he is writing, in Spenserian stanza,
and even occasionally with a word borrowed from
Spenser ; but the spirit that stirs the lines is Camp
bell. The theme is an imaginary journey up the
Hudson, and West Point suggests the two stanzas :

" Follow this narrow path to where the grass
Grows fresher on yon gently-rising mound,
To that lone brook, whose ripples as they pass
Spread to the air a sleep-compelling sound ;
Here, Poland's hero erst a refuge found.
Go ask whose good right arm hurl'd back the slave,
When Russia's eagle o'er his country frown'd,
Who led her little band of patriots brave ;

And weeping Freedom points to Kosciusko's grave.

" Spirit of Freedom ! who didst erst inspire
Our nation ground beneath oppression's sway,
With trust in God, with thine own holy fire ;
Who nerv'dst the mother fond to send away
Her first-born boy to brave the bloody fray,
Bid him farewell, with full averted eyes,
Ne ask, though longing, for a moment's stay,
Still hover o'er us, if thou didst not rise

With Washington's pure spirit to thy native skies ! "

The other correspondent whose letters from
Lowell are preserved was George Bailey Loring,
a boy of his own age, the son of a clergyman who
was Dr. Lowell's friend, so that the friendship par
took of an hereditary character ; with him Lowell

SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 39

had frank intimacy during their college days and
in the years immediately following. Their ways
in life separated, and they had less community of
interests and tastes when they came to manhood.
Dr. Loring went early into public life and held
various offices, being Commissioner of Agriculture
at one time and at another United States Minister
to Portugal.

In this fuller series of letters which is largely
contained in Mr. Norton's two volumes, Lowell is
the frank, unformed boy, giving vent to nonsense,
a lad's hasty impulse, and the foolery which goes on
in the name of sentiment. The equality of age cre
ated a different relation between them from that
which Lowell bore to Shackford, and the famil
iarity of their intercourse called out all manner of
intellectual pranks and youthful persiflage. The
jingle and lively verses which Lowell threw out for
the amusement of his comrade show him playing
carelessly with the instrument which he was already
beginning to discover as fitting his hand.

Lowell's unaffected interest in boyish things is
much more apparent in these random letters than
in the more careful epistles to his older friend,
though he is by no means silent on the side of his
intellectual life. In his first letter, dated 23 July,
1836, he talks about the things that two college
boys have on their minds at the beginning of vaca
tion. " You must excuse me if this be not a very
long or entertaining epistle, as I am writing from
my brother's office (with a very bad pen) in a
great hurry. I shall not go to Canada and shall

40 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

not start for Portsmouth] probably for three
weeks. My circular came on last night, 14 prayers,
56 recitations, whew ! The class supper was glori
ous, toasts went off very well. Those about Parker
and the Temperance Society were most applauded.
I am going to join the ' Anti-Wine ' I think. The
' Good Schooner Susan, R. T. S. L. owner and
master,' will make an excursion to Nahant this day.
Distinguished Passenger etc. We shall go to
church at Nahant Sunday and return Monday

morning. By the way I ' made up ' with and

— at the supper. I had a seat reserved (!) for
me (as an officer) on the right hand of the distin
guished president (?) A prettier table I never
saw."

The letters to his college friends were naturally
written mainly in vacation time, and in Christinas
week of the same year, 1836, he writes : " I am go
ing to a ball to-night at the house of a young lady
whom I never heard of. ... I 've begun and writ
ten about forty lines of my H. P. C. 1 proemium. I

shall immortalize I k W . I extol him to

the skies and pari passu depreciate myself." He
went to the ball, and a few days later wrote : " I
think I told you I was going to a party or ball
(call it what you will) : well, I went, made my
bow, danced, talked nonsense with young ladies
who could talk nothing but nonsense, grew heartily
tired and came away. I saw a great many people

1 The Hasty Pudding1 Club, a Harvard students' club, which
has always made much of literature of the lighter sort, its spe
cialty now being1 amateur theatricals.

SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 41

make fools of themselves, and charitably took it
for granted that I did the same. ... I may add
something in the morning, so no more from your
aching headed and perhaps splenetic, but still af
fectionate friend, J. R. L."

In these letters Lowell twits his friend with his
attentions to girls, and intersperses his jibes with
poor verses ; he has become a zealous autograph
hunter, and the letters he laid his hands on in his
father's house from home and foreign notabilities
illustrate the wide connections of the family, and
the part it had had in the great world. In the
midst of it all he will burst forth into almost pas
sionate expression of his love for nature and his
strong attachment to his birthplace and its neigh
borhood ; and again quote freely from the books
he is reading, and tell of the progress he is making
in his more serious poetical ventures, and the books
he is adding to his library. lie made no boast of
immunity when he laughed at his friend for too
much susceptibility. Here is a passage from a let
ter written in the summer of 1837, when he was
closing his junior year : —

..." Did n't I have a glorious time yesterday?
That I did if smiles from certain lips I

' prize
Above almost, I don't know what, on earth '

could make a day glorious. Excuse me for quot
ing my own nonsense, but 't was more apt than
anything I could think of. ... Imagine yourself
by the side of a young lady the perfection of
beauty, virtue, modesty, etc., etc., in whom you

42 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

entertain a pleasing interest, and you may form a
* faint imagining ' of my situation. I am not calm
yet. In fact, every time I think of her eyes —
those eyes ! Guido never could have conceived
her. Well, a truce with all recollections when
there is no hope."

A month later he gave a brief account of Com
mencement to his friend, and then speaks of a let
ter his brother Rob had received from their sister,
then in Glasgow. Lowell's father, mother, and
sister Rebecca went to Europe early in the sum
mer of 1837. They were gone three years, and
during that time the young collegian found in his
brother Charles his nearest friend and adviser ; his
house indeed was the student's home when he was
not in college, and his wife was the best of sisters
to him. Mrs. Anna Cabot Lowell was herself a
woman of fine culture and of unwonted intellectual
power. At a later period than this she opened a
school for girls, which is looked upon by many now
in mature life with warm gratitude. She edited a
choice collection of poems for the reading of school
girls, and compiled also a little volume of sugges
tive thoughts called " Seed Grain." Dr. Lowell,
meanwhile, parted from his son with parental so
licitude, and wrote him on the eve of sailing a
letter which is quaintly expressive of his own in
genuous nature and of the simplicity of the day,
and slightly indicative of his son's weaknesses as
they appeared to a father's eyes : —

SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 43

NEW YORK, May 29th, 1837.

MY DEAR SON, — I wish you to write us once
a month, making an arrangement with Robert not
to write at the same time he does. You know the
necessity for economy, and you know that I shall
never deny you, but from necessity, what will
afford you pleasure. I shall direct Charles to pay
you half a dollar a week. If you are one of the
first eight admitted to the $ B K, 11.00 per week,
as soon as you are admitted. If you are not, to
pay you 75 cents per week as soon as you are ad
mitted. If I find my finances will allow it, I shall
buy you something abroad. If you graduate one
of the first five in your class, I shall give you $ 100
on your graduation. If one of the first ten, $75.
If one of the first twelve, $50. If the first or
second scholar, $200. If you do not miss any
exercises unexcused, you shall have Bryant's ' My
thology,' or any book of equal value, unless it is
one I may specially want.

My dear child, I wish you only to be faithful
to yourself. You can easily be a fine scholar, and
therefore in naming the smallest sum for your
weekly expenses, I feel no hesitation, as it depends
on yourself, with very little exertion, to secure the
second highest sum, and with not more exertion
than is perfectly compatible with health and suffi
cient recreation to secure the largest. Use regu
lar exercise. Associate with those who will exert
the best influence upon you. Say your prayers
and read your Bible every day. I trust you have
made up all your exercises. If not, make them up

44 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

in one week, and let the president know it. Do
not get anything charged except with Charles's
knowledge and approbation. I have given him in
structions respecting your expenses. . . .

Your affectionate father.

Dr. Lowell wrote many letters home and re
counted the pleasant experiences of the little party
in Scotland and England, their foregathering with
the Traill family, and the visits they paid to
Wordsworth, Southey, Sir David Brewster, and
others. But he does not forget to continue his ad
monitions and encouragements, as he receives his
son's reports of his doings. " Your office," he
writes from London, 13 December, 1837, " as one
of the editors of the ' Harvardiana ' may give you
a greater familiarity in composition. Be careful
that it does not abstract you from severer pursuits,
and that your style is not trifling, but the subject
and the manner useful and dignified. I do not
allow myself to doubt of your furnishing the crite
rion of good standing which a membership of the
3> B K will furnish, and I trust you will leave col
lege with a high part and a high reputation.

" God bless you, my dear child. Aim high, very
high. I feel its importance for you more than
ever."

Harvardiana, to which Dr. Lowell refers, was
the college magazine of the day, started just as
Lowell entered college, and naturally inviting a
scribbler like Lowell to become one of the editors
when his senior year came round. His associates

SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 45

were Ruf us King, who later attained a leading posi
tion in the bar of Cincinnati, and wrote " Ohio "
in the American Commonwealths series ; George
Warren Lippitt, afterward for a long time secre
tary of legation at Vienna; Charles Woodman
Scates, a South Carolinian lawyer of great promise,
who died young, and Nathan Hale, an older brother
of Dr. Edward Everett Hale, and later a strong:

O

figure in Boston journalism. Lowell contributed
twenty-four pieces in prose and verse, translations
from the German, a bit of moralizing in the minor
key which youth likes to pursue, some fierce sar
donic verses, some sentiment, and then a mockery
of sentiment. For the most part his contributions
are the " larks " of students given to literature.
With his associates he followed the example set
by Blackwood, and imitated by the Knickerbocker
and similar magazines, aiming at the sauciness and
jocularity which were assumed to be the ordinary
temper of editors gathered about their table,
whereas in actual experience such editors are pain
fully at their wits' end. What most strikes one
in these varied contributions is the apparent facil
ity with which everything is thrown off, sense and
nonsense coming with equal ease, but nonsense pre
dominating.

Lowell's letters to his friends in his last year at
college have frequent reference to his willing and
unwilling labors on this " perryodical," as he was
wont to call it in mimicry of Dr. Walker. In
August, 1837, he sends Shackford a cii-cular invit
ing subscriptions to Ildrvardiana, and on the blank

46 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

leaf writes one of the imitative letters in verse, for
which he had a penchant at this time : —

" Dear Shack, a circular I send ye
The which I hope will not offend ye ;
If sae, 't wad tak' Auld Nick to mend ye

O' sic an ill
But, gin ye are as when I keuu'd ye

It never will !

" Gin ye could get ae body's name
'T wad add forever to his fame
To help to kindle up the flame

O' sic a journal,

Whose reputation, though quite lame,
Will he eternal.

" Now if ye do your vera best
In this maist glorious behest,
By gettin' names and a' the rest

I need na tell

Yese thus fulfil the airn'st request
0' J. II. L."

" King has been up here," he writes from Elm-
wood, 22 December, 1837, " for an article for the
* Perry,' but was unsuccessful in the attempt. The
fact is, it is impossible to read Lockhart's ' Life of
Scott ' and attend to my illustrious nephew, ' the
corporal,' who is a very prototype of Jack Falstaff,
and write an article which requires such deep study
and abstraction."

The magazine was a part of that spontaneous
literary activity which is pretty sure to find vent in
college life outside of the class room, in independ
ent reading, in societies sometimes secret, some
times public, and in weekly, monthly, or quarterly
journals. Lowell, with his growing consciousness

SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 47

of literary faculty and his naturally vagarious im
pulses, turned aside from the set tasks of college,
as we have seen, and allowed himself to be indiffer
ent to the routine imposed by college regulations.
There are always men in college who undertake to
be independent while living in it ; sometimes the
instinct is wise, sometimes it is merely the impulse
of an indolent or conceited nature, but college au
thorities, like most constitutional governors, are
bound to take more account of law than arbitrary
and irresponsible rulers are, and their severity falls
indiscriminately on the just and unjust. Lowell
had made himself amenable to discipline on this
score, but he might have escaped with reprimands
only, had he not committed a breach of propriety
in chapel which could not be overlooked. Such, at
least, is the recollection of one of his college mates
writing long afterward to Mr. T. W. Higginson,
who prints his letter in " Old Cambridge."

The circumstantial account given in this letter
has a plausible air, and may be wholly true, but if
so, it was probably the final occasion rather than
the cause of Lowell's suspension. The record of
the Faculty is somewhat more general in its ex
planation. " 25 June, 1838. Voted that Lowell,
senior, on account of continued neglect of his col
lege duties be suspended till the Saturday before
Commencement, to pursue his studies with Mr.
Frost of Concord, to recite to him twice a day,
reviewing the whole of Locke's ' Essay ' [On the
Human Understanding], and studying also Mack
intosh's ' Review of Ethical Philosophy,' to be

48 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

examined in both on his return, and not to visit
Cambridge during the period of his suspension."

Lowell seems to have taken his exile philosophi
cally. The fact that he would not be able to read
the class poem he had been chosen to give did not
prevent him from writing it, and the isolation of
his life gave him plenty of time for working at it.
The mild discipline of " rustication " included, as
the record shows, the requisite amount of study,
and Concord, to which he was sent for a couple of
months of study and reflection, was only fifteen
miles from Cambridge. The Rev. Barzillai Frost,
to whose oversight he was committed and with
whom he lodged, was a young man, recently gradu
ated from the Harvard Divinity School, and Mrs.
Frost endeared herself to the young culprit by her
affectionate care. In a speech which Lowell made
at Concord, on the celebration of the 250th anni
versary of the founding of the town, he introduced
this slight reminiscence of his work with Mr.
Frost : —

" In rising to-day I could not help being re
minded of one of my adventures with my excel
lent tutor when I was in Concord. I was obliged
to read with him ' Locke on the Human Under
standing.' My tutor was a great admirer of Locke,
and thought he was the greatest Englishman that
ever lived, and nothing pleased him more, conse
quently, than now and then to cross swords with
Locke in argument. I was not slow, you may
imagine, to encourage him in this laudable enter
prise. Whenever a question arose between my

SCHOOL AXD COLLEGE 49

tutor and Locke, I always took Locke's side. I
remember on one occasion, although I cannot now
recall the exact passage in Locke, — it was some
thing about continuity of ideas, — my excellent
tutor told me that in that case Locke was quite
mistaken in his views. My tutor said : ' For in
stance, Locke says that the mind is never without
an idea ; now I am conscious frequently that my
mind is without any idea at all.' And I must con
fess that that anecdote came vividly to my mind
when I got up on what Judge Hoar has justly
characterized as the most important part of an
orator's person."

Lowell knew something of Emerson when he
went to Concord. His letters show him before
that time going to hear him lecture in Boston, and
years afterward he recalled with fervor the impres
sion made upon him by Emerson's address before
the <£ B K in Lowell's junior year. It " was an
event," he says, " without any former parallel in
our literary annals, a scene to be always treasured
in the memory for its picturesqueness and its in
spiration. What crowded and breathless aisles,
what windows clustering with eager heads, what
enthusiasm of approval, what grim silence of fore
gone dissent ! It was our Yankee version of a lec
ture by Abelard, our Plarvard parallel to the last
public appearance of Schelling." * But in 1838
Emerson had published little, his fame resting
mainly on his public lectures and addresses. In
the address at Concord, quoted above, Lowell re-
1 " Thoreau," in Literary Essays, i. 366.

50 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

cords a memory of the personal relations which he
then established with the elder poet : —

" I am not an adopted son of Concord. I can
not call myself that. But I can say, perhaps, that
under the old fashion which still existed when I
was young, I was ' bound out ' to Concord for a
period of time ; and I must say that she treated
me very kindly. I then for the first time made
the acquaintance of Mr. Emerson, and I still re
call with a kind of pathos, as Dante did that of his
old teacher, Brunette Latini, ' La cara e buona
imagine paterna,' 'The dear and good paternal
image,' which he showed me here ; and I can also
finish the quotation and say, ' And shows me how
man makes himself eternal.' I remember he was
so kind to me — I, rather a flighty and exceed
ingly youthful boy, as to take me with him on
some of his walks, particularly a walk to the cliffs,
which I shall never forget."

Lowell formed at Concord the friendship which
lasted for life with E. R. Hoar, and the lady who
was to be Judge Hoar's wife. These two indeed
seemed to be excepted in his mind from the Con
cord people whom he met. He was plainly, as his
letters show, in a restless mood, dissatisfied with
himself, going through his appointed tasks with
the obedience which was habitual, and writing, as
the impulse took him, on his Class Poem, but
moody, irritable, and chafing at the bonds which
held him. There was the uncomfortable conscious
ness of serving out his time at Concord for a mo
mentary jest, but there was also the profounder

SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 51

unrest which came from the friction of discipline
with the awakening of powers not yet fully under
stood or determined. A few passages from his
letters to G. B. Loring will partially disclose the
way he tossed himself about.

July 1, 1838.

You mustn't expect so long a letter from me
as the one you favored me with (and I hope sin
cerely you '11 favor me with many more such (for
nothing is more pleasant to me than a friend's let
ters) (except himself) (there, I have got into one
of my parentheses, which I can't help to save my
life — damnation ! I 'm only making the matter
worse ! so I '11 begin again. . . . This appears to
be a pretty decent sort of a place — but I 've no
patience talking about. I shall fly into a passion
on paper, and then — as Hamlet says — then what ?
You can't guess, now you know you can't ! Why,
I should be apt to " tear my passion to tatters.'1
Pretty good, eh ! for an un-Sheridanic one ? Well,
as I was saying, the poem has n't progressed (they
say that 's a Yankee word ; it 's a damned good
word, as most Yankee things are) a line since I
left the shades of Alma Mater. I want the spirit
up here, I want

' Mine ancient chair, whose wide embracing arms," etc.

I shall take to smoking again for very spite. The
only time I have felt the flow of song was when I
heard the bull-frogs in the river last night. . . .

I shall do my best to please Mr. F. since I find
he does his best to please me and make me com-

52 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

for table ; " that 's the ground I stand on." I feel
in a shocking humor, that is, not grouty (I 'm not
such a damned fool; no offence I hope), but cursed
queer. I damn Concord, and as the man in a story
I read somewhere who was shot in a duel patheti
cally exclaimed in his last struggle, I — " damn
everything." ... I have written you more than I
intended, have two more to write to-night, and 50
pages in Macintosh. . . . Don't for heaven's sake
think I write in such a hurry from affectation. I
wish with all my heart it were so.

July 8.

... I don't know that I shan't get gloomy up
here, and be obliged, like the gallant old Sir Hudi-
bras's sword,

" To eat into myself, for lack
Of something else to cut and hack."

Everybody almost is calling me " indolent," 1
" blind, dependent on my own powers " and " on
fate." ... I acknowledge that I have been some-

1 There is a letter from Mrs. Anna Cabot Lowell, 3 July, 1838,
to her brother-in-law, which throws a little light on the way in
which his friends regarded Lowell at this time : " Aunt S. was
here last evening and depicted in a lively manner the grief of
Scates for your idle courses. She says he went to you with tears
in his eyes to implore you to persevere, and that he told his
friends in faltering accents that you had but this one fault in the
world. Being desirous to know the exact nature of that fault,
that you might apply the specific remedy, I asked her what the
fault was. She said ' indolence to be sure : indolence and the
Spence negligence.' I quote her very words. My opinion of the
case is that it proceeds more from negligence than indolence, and
more from a blind confidence in your powers and your destiny
than either."

SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 53

tiling of a dreamer and have sacrificed perchance
too assiduously on that altar to the " unknown
God," which the Divinity has builded not with
hands in the bosom of every decent man, sometimes
blazing out clear with flame (like Abel's sacrifice)
heaven seeking, sometimes smothered with green
wood and earthward like that of Cain. Lazy,
quotha ! I have n't dug, 'tis true, but I have done
as well, and " since my free soul was mistress of
her choice and could of books distinguish her elec
tion," I have chosen what^ reading I pleased and
what friends I pleased, sometimes scholars and
sometimes not. . . .

July 12.

For the Campbell I trust I need n't let my
thanks stare me in the face, so I shall leave you to
put yourself in my place and imagine them. If
you see Scates tell him to write, or I shall — ex
communicate, or something dreadful. If you hap
pen to go down by the bath house I wish you would
take a look after the skiff and write me about it.
Because perhaps I might come down to the Supper
in a wagon and bring it up ; at any rate, there will
be nobody there to take care of it when you leave
(or rather to lay claim to it), and it may be lost,
for which I should be sorry, for I hope to have con
siderable navigation out of her yet.

August 9.

I shall be free as a bird in a fortnight, and
'twill be the last Concord will ever see of me I
fancy. ... I am again in doubt whether to have
my " Poem " printed or no. I have n't written a

54 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

line since I have been in this horrible place. I feel
as queer as a woman does probably (unmarried of
course) when she finds herself in what Dante calls
" mezzo cammin del nostro vita." ... I 'in home
sick and all that sort of thing. Miss being

the only being I have actually sympathized with
since I have been in Concord has made me feel like
a fool. I must go down and see Emerson, and if
he does n't make me feel more like a fool it won't
be for want of sympathy in that respect. He is a
good-natured man, in §pite of his doctrines. He
travelled all the way up from his house to bring me
a book which had been sent to me via him.

August 17.

The first eight pages of the " Poem " are prob
ably printed by this time, and the proof on its
winding way, as Charlie Foster would say to me.
I wrote to the President requesting him to let me
go home to-morrow, but have n't yet received any
answer, and doubt much whether I ever shall.

I don't know what to do with Miss . She

runs in my head and heart more than she has any
right to, but then

A pair of black eyes
Of a charming size
And a lip so prettily curled, 0 !
Are enough to capsize
The intention wise
Of any man in the world, 0 !

For a pretty smile
Is a mighty wile
For a heart, for a heart that is light, 0 !

SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 55

And a girl like a dove
Makes a man fall in love,
Though he knows that it is n't right, 0 !

For love is a thing

That will quit the lonely king
To make sunny the cot of the peasant, 0 !

And it folds its gauzy wing —

In short — it is a thing —
'T is a thing — that is deuced pleasant, 0 !

Oh a gentle heart

Is the better part
Of a lovely woman's looks, O !

And I totter on the brink

Of love when I think,
When I think, when I think of Miss B , O !

For a thousand girls

Have hair that curls,
And a sort of expressive face, 0 !

But it is n't the hair

Nor the genteel air —
'T is the heart that looks bright and gives grace, O !

Ay, lasses are many

Without e'en a penny,
But with hearts worth their weight in gold, O I

Whom I 'd sooner wed —

Yea, and sooner bed
Than a princess rich, ugly, and old, 0 !

No bee e'er sucked honey

From gold or silver money,
But he does from the lovely flower, 0 !

Then give me a spouse

Without fortune, land, or house,
And her charming self for a dower, 0 !

By Jove, I like that better than anything I 've
written for two years ! I wrote it con amore and

56 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

currente calamo. 'T is yours now, but by your
leave I '11 copy it off, alter it a little and send it
down as " a song " for Ifarvardiana, for which I
protested I would write nothing O ! Why, it 's
good ! It sings itself ! I don't think I shall alter
anything but Miss B.'s name, for it ran off the end
of my pen so that it must be better than I can
make it. Why, I like it, I do. There is n't any
thing good in it either, except in the last passage.
It has really put me in good spirits. Between
Sunday and Wednesday I added about 250 lines
to the " Poem." It is not finished yet. I wish it
were.

The Class Poem, which he printed since he was
not permitted to be present at his class celebration,
when he would have read it, is a somewhat hap
hazard performance, as Lowell intimates in his let
ters. He says naively in one of the notes to the
poem, of which there is a liberal supply in an ap
pendix, that he suddenly discovered his subject
after he had begun writing, by happening to refer
in an off hand way to Kant.

" Kant, happy name ! change but the K to C,
And I will wring my poem out of thee.
Thanks, vast Immanuel ! thy name has given
The thing for which my brains so long have striven.

Cant be my theme, and when she fails my song,
Her sister Humbug shall the lay prolong."

The satire of a young collegian is apt to be
pretty severe, and Lowell runs amuck of Carlyle,
Emerson, the Abolitionists, the advocates of Wo-

SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 57

man's Rights, and the Teetotallers. For the most
part the poem runs along glibly in the decasyllabic
verse so handy to familiar poetry, and though there
are many lame lines, there are more instances of
the clever distichs which Lowell knocked off so
easily in later years than one would have guessed
from the examples of his verse which appear in his
early letters. Here, for example, are some of his
lines on Carlyle : —

" Hail too, great drummer in the mental march,
Teufelsdrockh ! worthy a triumphal arch,
Who send'st forth prose encumbered with jackboots,
To hobble round and pick up raw recruits,
And, able both to battle and to teach,
Mountest thy silent kettledrum to preach.
Great conqueror of the English language, hail !
How Caledonia's goddess must turn pale
To hear the German-Graeco-Latin flung
In Revolutions from a Scottish tongue! "

In the more serious and practical part of the
poem there is an impassioned burst imitative of
Campbell, in which he imagines the farewell words
of the Cherokee Indians, who at this time, to his
indignation, were being pushed westward from
Georgia.

To the debit of his youthful zeal may be set
down the lines on Emerson which were his foot
note to the famous address to the Divinity School
delivered 15 July, 1838 : -

" Woe for Religion, too, when men, who claim
To place a ' Reverend ' before their name,
Ascend the Lord's own holy place to preach
In strains that Kneeland had been proud to reach,
And which, if measured by Judge Thacher's scale,

68 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

Had doomed their author to the county jail !
When men just girding for the holy strife,
Their hands just cleansed to break the bread of life,
Whose souls, made whole, should never count it loss
With their own blood to witness for the cross,
Invite a man their Christian zeal to crown
By preaching earnestly the gospel-down,
Applaud him when he calls of earthly make
That ONE who spake as never yet man spake,
And tamely hear the anointed Son of God
Made like themselves an animated clod ! "

To the credit of his manliness may be set down,
per contra, the following- letter which he wrote
after the publication of the poem : a letter, which,
for all its boyish assumption ot the toga virilis,
has a ring of sincerity about it : —

CAMBRIDGE, Sept. 1st, 1838.

DEAR SIR, — In my class poem are a few lines
about your " address." My friends have expressed
surprise that after I had enjoyed your hospitality
and spoken so highly of you in private, I should
have been so ' ungrateful ' as ever to have written
anything of the kind. Could I have ever dreamed
that a man's private character should interfere
with his public relations, I had never blotted paper
so illy. But I really thought that I was doing
rightly, for I consider it as virtual a lie to hold
one's tongue as to speak an untruth. I should
have written the same of my own brother. Now,
sir, I trouble you with this letter because I think
you a man who would think nowise the worse of
me for holding up my head and speaking the truth
at any sacrifice. That I could wilfully malign a

SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 59

man whose salt I had eaten, and whose little child
I had danced on my knee, — he must be a small
man who would believe so small a thing of his
fellow.

But this word " ingratitude " is a very harsh
and grating word, and one which I hope would
never be laid to my charge since I stood at my
mother's knee and learnt the first 'very alphabet,
as it were, of goodness. I hope that if you have
leisure, sir, you will answer this letter and put me
at rest. I hope you "will acquit me (for I do not
still think there is aught to forgive or pardon, and
I trust you will not after reading this letter) of all
uncharitableness.

Of course no one can feel it as strongly as I
do, for since my friends have hinted at this " in
gratitude " I have felt a great deal, and scarcely
dare to look at the Tennyson you lent me without
expecting some of the devils on the cover to make
faces at me.

I hope you will find time to answer this and
that I may still enjoy your friendship and be able
to take you by the hand and look you in the face,
as honest man" should to honest man.

I remain yours with respect,

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

P. S. I have sent with this a copy of my
"• poem " — if it be not too tiresome, you would
perhaps think better of me, if you were to read it
through. I am not silly enough to suppose that
this can be of any importance to you (if, indeed,

GO JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

you ever heard of the passage I refer to), but it is
of very great importance to me.

J. K. L.

Lowell's own comment on the poem years after
was in the lines : —

" Behold the baby arrows of that wit

Wherewith I dared assail the woundless Truth !
Love hath refilled the quiver, and with it

The man shall win atonement for the youth." 1

In this the earliest of his acknowledged publi
cations, as so often in his later poems, satire and
sentiment jostle each other. The predominant
note, indeed, is satire in the lofty tone of nineteen,
but the invocation and the close are in a different
strain. Here, too, there is the exaltation of a very
young man, and one may read phrases which per
haps said more than Lowell meant to say ; but it
was a ruffled youth with which his college career
closed, and this period of his life was not to know
as yet any steadying force. It is not strange that
he grasped at somewhat illusory phantoms in his
eagerness to stay himself. Here are the invoca
tion and epilogue : —

" Oh thou ! to whom, where'er my footstep roam,
My restless soul would spread its pinions home, —
Reality ! more fair than any seeming
E'er blest the fancy of an angel's dreaming1, —
Be thou my muse, in whose blue eye I see
The heaven of my heart's eternity !
Oh, hover like a spirit at my side,
In all my wanderings a heavenly guide,

1 Letters, ii. 302.

SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 61

Then, if in Cant's dim mists I lose my way,
Thy blessed smile shall lead me back to day,
And, when I turn me from the land of night,
Thou, morning star of love, shalt herald light I

" Lady ! whom I have dared to call my muse,

With thee my day began, with thee shall end —
Thou can'st not such a poor request refuse

To let thine image with its closing blend !
As turn the flowers to the quiet dews,

Fairest, so turns my yearning heart to thee,
For thee it pineth — as the homesick shell

Mourns to be once again beneath the sea —
Oh let thine eyes upon this tribute dwell,

And think — one moment kindly think of me !
Alone — my spirit seeks thy company,

And in all beautiful communes with thine,
In crowds — it ever seeks alone to be

To dream of gazing in thy gentle eyne ! "

After all, the irregular impulses of the class
poem point to what is of more consequence, the
beginning of Lowell's manhood. Until the sum
mer of 1837, he had been a happy-go-lucky boy,
sunning himself in literature, in nature, and in his
friends ; then there set in a period when he was
at odds with fortune, and a stirring of half -under
stood desires arose ; the consciousness of power
was struggling with the wilfulness of youth.

CHAPTER III

FIRST VENTURES

1838-1844

As his college course drew near its close, Low
ell began to forecast his immediate future. His
growing devotion to letters, especially to poetry, and
perhaps the wish to linger a little longer within the
shelter of the academic life, led him to cherish
the notion of studying a while in Germany, and he
wrote to his father, who was still abroad, in pursu
ance of this plan ; but he received no encourage
ment. Germany, it was properly said to him, was
no place for the study of law by an American, and
the law was regarded as his vocation.

Vaguely conscious of his real calling, Lowell
passed in review the two professions of the min
istry and the law, which at that time would be
likely to attract one who had begun to use his pen
with as much assiduity as an embryo artist plies
his pencil in sketches. Unquestionably the minis
try opened a fair way of life to him, somewhat as
it had, less than a score of years earlier, to Emer
son, though the conditions had already begun to
change. Lowell shrank from adopting that calling
with an instinct which sprang in part from his
sense of its traditional sacredness, in part from

FIRST VENTURES 63

an increasing consciousness of his own separation
from the form of religious teaching which would
naturally be looked for in him. There was a
preacher in Lowell not merely by inheritance, but,
even at this time of nonsense and idle levity, in
the stirring of a soul that hated evil, and longed
to exercise an active influence in righting wrongs.
The full strength of this impulse was to be de
veloped shortly, and thenceforward to find con
stant expression through his life, for a preacher at
bottom he was throughout his career. An under
current of feeling persuaded him that he might
even take to preaching, if he could be sure of being
a celibate, and independent of any harassing anx
iety respecting his support. But as he wrote of
himself a few years later to his friend Briggs : " I
believe my religion (I am an infidel, you know, to
the Christianity of to-day, and so my religion is
something palpable to me in case of strait) arms
me against any sorrows to come." The youthful
protest in the parenthesis must be taken seriously,
but not subjected to microscopic analysis. Rever
ence was an abiding element in his nature, and it
was early displayed, but it was reverence for what
was intrinsically to be revered, and that very spirit
carried with it an impatient reaction against con
ventional religion. In the letter to Dr. Loring, in
which he discussed the question of going into the
Divinity School, he was led, from a slight reference
to the doctrines which Emerson was announcing, to
speak more directly of personal religion.

" I don't know," he says, " whether we poor little

64 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

worms (who though but little lower than the an
gels are [but] a little higher than those whom our
every step annihilates) ought not to condescend to
allow that there may be something above his rea
son. We must sometimes receive light like the
Aurora without knowing where it comes from.
And then, on the other hand, we may be allowed to
doubt whether our wise Creator would have given
us a dispensation by which to govern our everyday
life, any part of which was repugnant to our rea
son. It is a question which every man must settle
for himself : indeed he were mad to let any settle
it for him."

An independence of judgment did not lead him
to throw away a fundamental faith in spiritual
realities, but it made him ready to refuse conform
ity with the nearest form of religion. At the
time he was writing, Lowell thought he saw the
churches, if not tolerant of a great evil, at least
mainly silent before it, and with the radicalism
which was as integral a part of him as his con
servatism, he broke away from associations which
seemed thus inert and false to the very ideals they
professed to cherish. Had not the poetic impulse
and the artistic temper been so strong in him, it is
quite possible that as Emerson in his philosophic
idealism had let the minister's gown slip from his
shoulders, yet had remained on the platform, so
Lowell in his moral earnestness might, if he had
really gone into the ministry, have shortly become
a witty reformer, preaching with the prophet's
leathern girdle and not in the priest's cassock.

FIRST VENTURES 65

But heredity and an impulse to deliver his mind
were not strong enough to take him into the pulpit
against the clear dictates of a reasonable judg
ment, and with apparently no disposition toward
medicine, he turned almost from necessity to the
law. The law, at first, at any rate, did not so
much attract him, as it was reached by a process
of elimination. The substantial motive which
urged him was his need of a livelihood. Although
his father at this time was in what is quaintly
termed " comfortable circumstances," Lowell, like
his fellows everywhere in America, most certainly
in New England, never would have entertained the
notion of living indefinitely at his father's expense.
As a matter of course he must earn his living, and
he was so meagrely supplied even with pocket
money at this time that his letters contain frequent
illustration of his inability to indulge in petty plea
sures — a short journey, for instance, the purchase
of a book or pamphlet, even postage on letters.

So, in the fall of 1838, when he was living at
Elmwood with his brother Charles, he began to
read Blackstone " with as good a grace and as few
wry faces " as he could. But suddenly, a fort
night only after making this assertion, he had
abandoned the notion of studying law, out of utter
distaste for it. It was after a great struggle, he
says, but the struggle was evidently one of those
occasional self-communings of the young man who
is not predestined to any profession, and yet is
unable to respond to the half articulate demands
of his nature. We can read Lowell's mind at this

66 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

time in the fragmentary confessions of his letters,
and see that the controlling influence was to secure
ultimately the right to devote himself to literature.
The law is a jealous mistress, and Lowell was saga
cious enough to perceive that to secure success in
the profession he must needs devote himself to it
with long and unremitting attention, and he was
sure a real love for the study of law was a condi
tion precedent to success. So again he weighed
the chances. Once more he considered the minis
try ; he even speculated over the possibilities of
medicine — his friend Loring had taken up that
for his profession ; but with a certain common-sense
view of the matter, he argued that if his occupation
were to be merely a means to an end, why, trade
was the logical road to money-making, and he set
about looking for a "place in a store."

" I must expect," he writes ruefully, " to give up
almost entirely all literary pursuits, and instead of
making rhymes, devote myself to making money."
But with a whimsical attempt after all to join his
ideals with this practical course, after saying that
in abandoning the law he gives up the chance of
going to Europe, since his father had promised
him this plum if he would stick to the law for three
years, he closes his letter : " I intend to go into a
foreign store so that I may be able to go to Europe
yet. I shall have to brush up my French so as to
write foreign letters."

This was written on Tuesday the 30th of Octo
ber. The next Monday, when he had gone to Bos
ton to look for a place, he dropped in at the United

FIRST VENTURES 67

States court where a case was on in which Webster
was one of the counsel. His imagination took fire.
" I had not been there an hour," he writes, " before
I determined to continue in my profession and
study as well as I could." By an unexpected cir
cumstance, however, he was within a month inter
rupted in his study. His brother Robert, who was
in the counting-room of a coal merchant, was laid
up with a lame hand, and so James took his place
at the desk. It is not impossible that he was se
cretly glad of making thus, with a good conscience,
a little test of his aptitude for business.

His position as a substitute gave him a breath
ing spell, and he plunged again into rhyming.
His letters during the winter were full of experi
ments in verse, and he was, moreover, giving seri
ous attention to the technique of poetry, having
recourse to such manuals as Sidney's " Defense of
Poesie" and Puttenham's "Art of English Poesie,"
a characteristic act, for he had the same instinct
for the great genetic period of English poetry as
Lamb and his fellows in England had a generation
earlier. He even besran to throw out lines in the

O

direction of self-support through literature. Be
sides his trials in the newspapers and magazines, he
took the chance given him to lecture in Concord,
and he wondered if his friend Loring could get
him an opportunity at Andover. He had " quitted
the law forever " on the 26th of February, 1839,
but the mood of exhilaration over a possible mainte
nance through lecturing evaporated after a return
from Concord with four dollars, less his travelling

68 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

expenses, as the result of his first experiment. And
yet business was as repellent to him as law. In a
letter to G. B. Loring of March, 1839, he bursts
forth into a cry of bitterness : —

" I don't know what to do with myself. I am
afraid people will think me a fool if I change again,
and yet I can hardly hope ever to be satisfied where
I am. I should n't wonder if next Monday saw
me with Kent's Commentaries under my arm. I
think I might get to take an interest in it, and
then I should not fear at all about the living. If I
had not been thrice a fool, I should have been in
Dane Law College reciting at this very moment.
And what makes me feel still worse is that nobody
knows or can know my motive for changing, and
the struggle which kept me irresolute.

" I am certainly just at present in a miserable
state, and I won't live so long. You must excuse
the shortness of this letter, for my feelings are in
such a distracted sort of a state that the more I
write the less do I feel able to write.

" Dear George, when I am set at table
I am indeed quite miserable,
And when as that I lie in bed,
Strife and confusion whirl my head ;
When I am getting up at morn
I feel confoundedly forlorn,
And when I go to bed at eve
I can do nought but sigh and grieve.
When I am walking into town
I feel all utterly cast down,
And when I 'm walking out from it
I feel full many a sorrow fit."

The struggle in his mind went on through the

FIRST VENTURES 69

rest of the spring. He kept doggedly at his desk,
apparently, but wrote more verse, especially of a
serious sort. At last, on the 20th of May, he could
write in a somewhat forced strain of exultation :
" Kejoice with me ! For to-morrow I shall be free.
Without saying a word to any one, I shall quietly
proceed to Dane Law College to recitation. Now
shall I be happy again as far as that is concerned.
Nature will smile for me yet again. I shall hear
the merry tinkle of the brook and think not of the
tinkle of dollars and cents. Upon the ocean I may
look, nor dream of the rates of freight. Let us
rejoice, George, in the days of our youth. We
shall find it very different when we come to sup
port ourselves. Good old Homer in the Odyssey
makes Telemachus tell Minerva, ' Well may they
laugh and sing and dance, for they are eating the
bread of another man.' Now we who eat our
father's bread at present may be as merry as we
will. But very different will it be when every
potato that we eat (lucky if we can get even those)
shall seem watersoaked with the sweat of our
brow. I am going to be as happy as the days are
long."

A little later he wrote : " I am now a law stu
dent, and am really studying and intend to study.
I shall now be able to come and spend some Satur
day with you and come down Monday morning.
. . . To-day I have been engaged an hour in reci
tation, 9 to 10, and then from 11 to 3.} o'clock in
studying law, which, as we only have one recitation
a day, is pretty well. I have determined that I

70 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

will now do something. I am lazy enough, heaven
knows, but not half so much so as some of my
friends suppose. At all events, I was never made
for a merchant, and I even begin to doubt whether
I was made for anything in particular but to loiter
through life and then become manure."

From this time forward Lowell did not relin
quish his study of law. He confessed, indeed, to
a doubt if he should ever practice. He had a
" blind presentiment of becoming independent in
some other way," and he allowed himself to dream
of cultivating literature in solitude on a little oat
meal, but he pushed through to the nominal end,
and took his degree of bachelor of laws at com
mencement in August, 1840.1 Not long after, he
entered the law office in Boston of Mr. Charles
Greely Loring, and when the winter came he went
himself to Boston to live.

The vacillation and apparent irresolution out
lined in his fickle pursuit of a profession in the
months after his graduation are unmistakable, but
there are expressions now and then in the letters
we have quoted that strike one as a little exag
gerated even to one so open to attacks from con
science as was Lowell. Why such a pother, one
might ask, over an embarrassment which is not
very uncommon, and after all touches chiefly the
prudential side of character ? " Nobody knows or

1 It was not uncommon in those days and long after for a stu
dent to take his degree at the Law School after a year or two only
of study and then to continue to hear lectures. Lowell's name is
on the catalogue of the school for the year following his degree.

FIRST VENTURES 71

can know my motives for changing, and the strug
gle which kept me irresolute ; " but the boyish
companion to whom he wrote undoubtedly had an
inkling of his friend's perturbation, though frank
as that friend was in his correspondence and in
tercourse, he could surely have said, " the heart
knoweth its own bitterness."

The solution is simple enough in statement. Be
fore his last year in college Lowell had met and
fallen fiercely in love with a beautiful girl, one of
the circle in which his family moved, and endowed
with intellectual grace and great charm of manner.
Then something came between them, and separa
tion became inevitable, at least it became so in
Lowell's own view of the situation. The shock of
this rupture left not a shade of reproach for the
girl in Lowell's mind, but it broke up the foun
tains of the deep in his own life. He was scarcely
more than a boy in years, but he had in tempera
ment and capacity for emotion a far greater ma
turity. He could write of himself a few years
later : " Brought up in a very reserved and con
ventional family, I cannot in society appear what
I really am. I go out sometimes with my heart so
full of yearning toward my fellows that the indif
ferent look with which even entire strangers pass
me brings tears to my eyes." There was indeed
an extraordinary frankness about him in these
early days, filling his letters with expressions which
might easily have made him wince in later years ;
but the spontaneity of his nature, which was always
seen in the unguardedness of his familiar writing

72 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

and his conversation, had in these days the added
ingenuousness of youth.

The experience thus referred to in the summer
of 1837 was no short, sharp passion burning itself
out in quick rage ; it smouldered and leaped up
into flame at intervals for two years, fed moreover
by the consciousness of his own impotence and the
predicament into which he was helplessly drawn ;
and it was during these two years that this rest
lessness and vacillation of temper were almost un
governable. Later in life even he looked back
with horror upon this time, saying half in pity,
half in contempt for himself, that he put a cocked
pistol to his forehead in 1839, and had not finally
the courage to pull the trigger.

It would be easy to fill many pages with illustra
tions drawn from unprinted poems written during
this period, and they would have the added value
of disclosing the fact that poetry was fast becom
ing the natural expression of his mind, even while
he was fashioning it with constantly better art.
In a letter written to Loring, 26 July, 1839, con
taining two bits of verse lyrically interpretative of
his experience, he says : " You must not be sur
prised if I don't write again for some time, but
the next time I do write I trust my letters will be
better worth the postage. At any rate, it shall be
filled more with my real than with my poetical
me ; although now they are synonymous terms, as
they should be, for my poetry answers me very
much as a sort of journal or rather nousometer."

It is hard for most of us to escape the lurking

FIRST VENTURES 73

judgment that the man, or boy either, who throws
his spiritual experience into verse is more or less
consciously dramatizing, and we are apt to credit
greater honesty to the one who does not than to
the one who does poetize his disappointments ; but
in spite of the artfulness which betrays itself in
the effort of one who has not yet perfect command
of his instrument, there is a ring of sincerity about
Lowell's poetic journal which, without juggling, we
both infer from his nature as it is otherwise dis
closed, and make illustrative of the real life of the
spirit. Here are some verses which occur in a let
ter to Dr. Loring in the summer of 1839. In
writing of them to his friend a few days later,
Lowell says : " The lines I wrote to you the other
day were improvised, and you must judge them
leniently accordingly. I do not think now, as I
did 'two years ago,' that poetry must be an in
spiration, but am convinced that somewhat of care,
nay, even of thought, is requisite in a poem."

" Turn back your eyes, my friend, with me
Upon those two late parted years —
Nay, look alone, for I can see
But inward through these bitter tears :
Deep grief sometimes our mind's eye clears.

" How much lies in that one word ' Past ' I
More than in all that waits before ;
How many a saddened glance is cast
To that stern wall of nevermore,
Whose shadow glooms our heart's deep core.

1 As hard it is for mortal glance
To pierce the Has been's mystery
And force of iron circumstance

74 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

Which said let these and these things be,
As to resolve futurity.

" A many streams that once ran full
Of joy or Marah waves of pain,
Wasting or making beautiful,
Have sunk no more to flow again,
And scarce the tracks they wore remain.

" And many shades of joy and woe
Pass cloudlike, silent, o'er my soul,
Which not one being else may know,
And into utter darkness roll,
Links lost from out my being's whole.

" This Present is becoming Past ;
Live then each moment manfully
If you would wish your deeds to last,
Sowing good seed continually
Whose harvest time is yet to be.

" In our great pride we think that we
Build up our high or low estate,
Dimly half conscious that we see
The paths which lead to small and great
Through the fixed eye of settled Fate.

" The Past may guide the Future's ways :
Seeds cast far up the stream of time,
Returning after many days,
May grow to their ordained prime
Of fruitage in another clime . "

As if to reinforce our confidence in the genuine
ness of the emotion which prompted these moral
verses, written apparently to the sound of Long
fellow's " Psalm of Life," which had just appeared
in the Knickerbocker, we come in a few weeks to a
rhymed letter in which a reminiscence of the same

FIRST VENTURES 75

experience is recorded with simplicity and natural
ness in a homely poetic strain : —

" Two years ago, in days how like to these,
Yet how unlike ! beneath the changing trees
I walked with her full many a happy hour,
Pausing to gather some belated flower,
Or to pick up some nut half eaten, dropt
By a scared squirrel as away he hopt.
The jest, the laugh, and the more high debate
To which the forest aisles seem consecrate,
Nay, even the jest, and the dark plaided shawl
That loved her light form — I remember all :
For then I entered that fair gate of love
On whose bright arch should be inscribed above,
As o'er that other in the Tuscan's story —
' Per me si va ne 1' eterno dolore.'
The leaves were falling round us then, and we
Talked of their many meanings musingly.
Ah, woe is me ! we did not speak at all
Of how love's leaves will wither, change, and fall —
Full silently — and how the pent up breast
Will hide the tears that cannot be represt."

In this same letter Lowell enumerates at the
close the books he is reading and about to read : —

" I 'm reading now the Grecian tragedies,
Stern, gloomy ^Eschylus, great Sophocles,
And him of Salamis whose works remain
More perfect to us than the other twain.
(Time 's a gourmand, at least he was so then,
And thinks his leavings good enough for men.)
When I have critically read all these,
I '11 dip in cloudy Aristophanes,
And then the Latin dramatists, and next
With mathematics shall my brain be vext.
So if I carry all my projects through
I shall do pretty well, I think, don't you ? "

What most impresses the attentive reader of
Lowell's verses and letters as the two years, to

7G JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

which he so often refers, draw to a close, is the
evidence that the young man was finally emerging
from the mist and cloud through which he had been
struggling, and was getting his feet upon solid
ground, so that not only was his irresolution changed
for a fairly diligent pursuit of his profession, but
he had acquired a greater robustness of spirit and
was squaring himself with life in earnest. The in
ternal conflict had been fought out and the substan
tial victory gained was showing itself in greater
self-reliance and a growth in manly ways.

It is therefore with especial satisfaction that the
chronicler of his external history comes upon an
event which was to mark emphatically the attain
ment of his intellectual and spiritual majority.
Near the end of the year 1839 he made the ac
quaintance of Maria White. She was the daughter
of Mr. Abijah White, a farmer in Watertown, whom
Lowell characterized 011 first meeting him as " the
most perfect specimen of a bluff, honest, hospitable
country squire you can possibly imagine." Mr.
White had a family of sons and daughters who
thenceforward became Lowell's familiar acquaint
ance. One of the sons, William A. White, had
been a classmate at Harvard, — he speaks of him
once as his "quondam chum," — and it was by him
that Lowell was introduced to his home. As Lowell
had written with great freedom to his friend Loring
of his troubled experience, so now one may trace in
this very frank correspondence the manner in which
this new affection displaced the mournfulness of
that experience and substituted great peace and

FIRST VENTURES 77

content for the soreness which still remained after
a struggle that had resulted in substantial self-
mastery.

In his earliest, hardly more than casual reference
to Maria White he characterizes her as " a very
pleasant and pleasing young lady" who "knows
more poetry " than any one he is acquainted with.
" I mean," he says, " she is able to repeat more.
She is more familiar, however, with modern poets
than with the pure well-springs of English poesy."
His changing mood during the winter months that
follow is visible in the poetry which he writes and
copies in his letters, but in the early summer there
is a bolder and franker tone, until the acquaintance
which has ripened into intimacy culminates in an
engagement not long after the completion of the
lover's law studies.

June 13, 1840. I got back from Watertown,
whither I went to a gathering at Miss Hale's
(whose family are boarding at the Nonantum).
I spent the night at W. A. W.'s. Lovely indeed
it was with its fair moon and stars and floating
cloud mist. I walked back with M. W. on my
arm, and not only did my body go back, but my
spirit also over the footsteps of other years. Were
not the nights then as lovely ... and the river
that we gazed down into — think you those water-
parties are so soon forgotten ? When we got to
the house we sat upon the steps and talked, —

And then like a Spring-swollen river

Roll the full waves of her tumultuous thought,

78 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

Crested with glittering spray ;

Her wild lips curve and quiver,

And my rapt soul on the deep stream upc aught,

Lulled by a dreamful music ever,

Unwittingly is borne away.

I float to a delicious land,

By a sunset Heaven spanned,

And musical with streams.

Around, the calm majestic forms

And Godlike eyes of early Greece I see,

Or listen till my spirit warms

To songs of courtly chivalry,

Or weep, unmindful if my tears be seen,

For the meek suffering love of poor Undine.

She is truly a glorious girl with her spirit eyes.
On the mantel is a moss rose she gave me and
which when it withers I shall enshrine in my
Homer. This morning I drove her up to Wal-
tham. They tell me I shall be in love with her.
But there is but one Love. I love her because she
is a woman, and so was another being I loved.

August 18, 1840. Since you heard from me I
have been at Nantasket and had a fine time. I
found M. W., her brother, and Page,1 down there,
and I carried Heath with me. I had one glorious
ride on the beach with M. W., I having hired a
horse and gig at Hingham. Hingham is a strange
place. I walked through the greater part of it
one day and did not even see a living soul. . . .

Nantasket is a beautiful place. The beach is
five miles long, smooth, hard sand without a peb
ble. When the wind blows on shore you may see

1 William Page, the artist, whom Lowell first knew through
the Whites.

FIRST VENTURES 79

one line of unbroken white foam, five miles long,
roll up the beach at once. I spent one whole even
ing alone on the rocks with M. W. A glorious
evening it was. Page's portrait of M. W. is going
to be fine, at least I hope so. It ought to be. . . .

August 25, 1840. I have just finished read
ing Goethe's correspondence with a child, Bettina
Brentano. I had long tried (rather wished) to get
it, the more so from some beautiful extracts which
M. W. read to me, but had never seen it till now.
It is beautiful. It is wonderful when we think
that Bettina was a child. It is like sunshine on
grass newly rained upon — like the smell of a
flower — like the song of a bird. We are given
to look into the very core of the most loving heart
that ever came directly from God and forgot not
whence it came.

But it was mournful to think that all this love
should have been given to the cold, hard Goethe.1
I wanted such a soul for myself. M. "W.'s is
nearer to it than any I have ever seen. But I
should have seen her three years ago. If that
other love could raise such a tempest in my soul
as to fling up the foul and slimy weeds from the
bottom, and make it for so long sluggish and
muddy, a disappointment from her would I think
have broken my heart.

George, twice lately I have had a very strange

1 " Goethe's poetic sense was the Minotaur to -which he sacri
ficed everything. To make a study he would soil the maiden
petals of a woman's soul." — " Lessing," in Literary Essays, ii.
195.

80 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

dream. Byron says that dreams " shake us with
the vision of the past." Do they not also shake us
with the vision of what is to come ? I dreamed
that I went to see M. W., that I saw her walking
just before me, and that when I strove to overtake
her, she vanished. I asked a man whom I met if
he had seen her (describing her). He said " yes,
she has gone down the happy road." I followed,
but could get no glimpse of her. Does this mean
that I shall love M. W. and that she will die ?
Homer says that there are two gates of quickly
fading dreams, one of sawn ivory, and the other
of polished horn. Those dreams that pass thro'
the ivory gate are liars, but those that forth issue
from the polished horn tell truth to any one of
mortals who sees them. Did my dream come thro'
the horn or the ivory ? Are you oneirocritical
enough to say ? At any rate, remember this.
M. W. lent me a " sweet " book (sAe did not call
it so and I don't know why / did), " Philothea," by
Mrs. Child. If you ever come across it, read it.
It is, as Mr. Emerson called it, " a divine book."
. . . To-day is (or was) Commencement. I was
standing in the pew listening to the music when I
looked round and saw a pair of eyes fixed on me
that made me feel glad ; they were M. W.'s. I
thought she was in Beverly. I managed to squeeze
my way up to her at last and walked with her to
Judge Fay's, stayed there a little while and then
went to take my degree of LL. B. After dining
with the alumni, I walked round to the President's
in the faint hope of seeing her again. Just as I

FIRST VENTURES 81

got nearly there, I saw her go in. I went in after.
The man she was with left her, and I enjoyed her
for more than two hours. Soates made his appear
ance here to-day, so that my day has been a very
happy one.

P. S. There are more lies contained in the
piece of parchment on which my degree is written
than I ever before saw in a like compass. It
praises me for assiduous attention at recitations,
etc., etc. (This letter seems to be all about M. W.)
Good by, J. E. L.

Sunday, [31 August, 1840.] I have received
your letter and had also written an answer to it,
which I just burnt. It was written when I was
not in a fit state of mind to write. I had been
feeling very strongly that

" Custom lies about us with a weight
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life."

If I had written this an hour ago, it would have
been black and melancholy enough, but I have
smoked three cigars and ruminated and am calm —
almost. . . .

If I had seen her three years ago things might
have been not thus. But yet I would not give up
the bitter knowledge I gained last summer for
much — very much.

" Who never ate his bread in sorrow,
Who never passed the lonesome hours,
Weeping and watching for the morrow,
He knows ye not, ye Heavenly powers."

I have been calmer and stronger ever since. Oh
the glory of a calm, still soul ! If we could keep

82 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

our souls ever in a holy silence, we should be wise,
we should hear the music of the spheres. But they
will ever be talking to themselves. If we could
but become so, we should then ever have at our
beck those divine messengers which visit us also as
well as Abraham. . . .

Do " they say " that she is " transcendental " ?
Yes, she does indeed go beyond them. They can
not understand a being like her. But if they mean
that she is unfit for the duties of life, they are
entirely wrong. She has more " common sense "
than any woman I have ever seen. Genius always
has. Hear what Maria herself says in one of her
glorious letters to me. " When I said that I loved
you, I almost felt as if I had said ' and I will
espouse sorrow for thy sake,' for I have lived long
enough and observed life keenly enough to know
that not the truest and most exalted love can bar
the approach of much care and sorrow." And all
these she is ready and able to bear. Yes, she will
love you, for she loves everything that I love.

The first volume of poetry which Lowell pub
lished, " A Year's Life," is, as its name intimates,
a poetic record of the time covered by these and
other passages from his correspondence. It ap
peared in January, 1841, and he was moved to
print it both because Miss White desired it, and
because it was so full of her. The love which
found expression, as we have seen, in letters to a
familiar friend, could not fail of an outlet in verse,
and was but thinly concealed from the public in a

FIRST VENTURES 83

volume which, from Dedication to Epilogue, was
glowing with it. Many of the poems he had al
ready printed in the magazines for which he had
been diligently writing, and these poems, as they
appeared, were announcements, to those who knew
both the lovers, of the pure passion which was
flaming.

Two of the poems in particular reflect Lowell's
idealization of the lady and his consciousness of
what this experience meant to him. " ' Ian the,' "
he writes to Loring, " is good as far as it goes. I
did not know her then. She is a glorious creature
indeed ! "

" Dear, glorious creature ! "

he exclaims, near the close of the poem,

" With eyes so dewy bright,
And tenderest feeling

Itself revealing
In every look and feature,
Welcome as a homestead light
To one long-wandering in a clouded night ;
O, lovelier far her woman's weakness,

Which yet is strongly mailed
In armor of courageous meekness
And faith that never failed ! "

The lines on pages 77, 78 are from the same poem,
which was written thus when the acquaintance was
ripening into intimacy. The whole poem is a trib
ute to the visionary beauty of her face and charac
ter as revealed to him. " There is a light," thus
the poem opens : —

" There is a light within her eyes
Like gleams of wandering fire-flies ;
From light to shade it leaps and moves

84 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

Whenever in her soul arise

The holy shapes of things she loves."

Throughout the poem runs, moreover, an undercur
rent of holy awe and a presage of her short life,
which drew from him the reflections on death that
occur in his letters : —

" I may not tell the blessedness
Her mild eyes send to mine,
The sunset-tinted haziness
Of their mysterious shine,
The dim and holy mournfulness
Of their mellow light divine ;
The shadows of the lashes lie
Over them so lovingly,
That they seem to melt away
In a doubtful twilight-gray,
While I watch the stars arise
In the evening of her eyes.
I love it, yet I almost dread
To think what it f oreshadoweth ;
And, when I muse how I have read
That such strange light betokened death, —
Instead of fire-fly gleams, I see
Wild corpse-lights gliding waveringly."

The closing section of the poem holds a reflection
of that image which is after all most enshrined in
the poet's heart, as one may gather not only from
his after words concerning her, but from the influ
ence manifest in his own early career from this
time forward.

" Early and late, at her soul's gate
Sits Chastity in warderwise,
No thought unchallenged, small or great,
Goes thence into her eyes ;
Nor may a low, unworthy thought
Beyond that virgin warder win,
Nor one, whose passion is not ' ought,'

FIRST VENTURES 85

May go without, or enter in.
I call her, seeing those pure eyea,
The Eve of a new Paradise,
Which she by gentle word and deed,
And look no less, doth still create
About her, for her great thoughts breed
A calm that lifts us from our fallen state,
And makes us while with her both good and great, —
Nor is their memory wanting in our need :
With stronger loving, every hour,
Turneth my heart to this frail flower,
Which, thoughtless of the world, hath grown
To beauty and meek gentleness,
Here in a fair world of its own, —
By woman's instinct trained alone, —
A lily fair which God did bless,
And which from Nature's heart did draw-
Love, wisdom, peace, and Heaven's perfect law."

Lowell did not retain " lanthe " in his later col
lections, but he reprinted to the last the other poem
especially identified with Miss White which bears
the significant title " Irene." This, as the reader
perceives, is more distinctly a piece of characteriza
tion, and its closing lines, wherein Irene is likened
to the lone star seen by sailors tempest-tost, may
be read as carrying more than a pretty poetic
simile, for it cannot be doubted that the love which
now possessed the poet was in a profound sense a
word of peace to him. Something of the same
strain, though more remote and dramatic, may be
read in the poem " The Sirens," which is also re
tained by Lowell in his later collections, and is
dated in " A Year's Life " " Xantasket, July, 1840,"
a date which has an added interest when one refers
to the, letter given above on page 78. One more

86 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

passage may be read from his letters as giving his
own final word of retrospect and prospect. It oc
curs in a letter to G. B. Loring, 2 January, 1841.

" Yes, my friend, it is most true that I have
changed. I thank her and one other, under God,
for it. ... Had the love I bore to a woman you
know of three years ago, been as pure, true, and
holy as that I bear to her who ' never from me shall
be divided,' I had been a man sooner. My love
for her was fierce and savage. It rose not like the
fair evening star on the evening I first saw her (I
remember it well), but, (as she has said of such love)
like a lurid meteor. And it fell as suddenly. For
a time I was dazed by its glare and startled by the
noise of its bursting. But I grew calm and soon
morning dawned. . . .

" And I mean to live as one beloved by such a
woman should live. She is every way noble. People
have called ' Irene ' a beautiful piece of poetry.
And so it is. It owes all its beauty to her, and
were it a thousand times as beautiful would not be
so much so as she is to me."

The strong emotional experience which thus pos
sessed Lowell came to him when he was largely
under the sway of sentiment, but though, as we
have seen, it was translated into poetry very freely,
it is not so much the immediate expression in liter?
ary form which concerns us as it is the infusion of
an element in the formation of character. Lowell
was overcharged in his youth with sensitiveness in
affection. There was a fitf ulness in his demonstra
tion of it, an almost ungovernable outflow of feeling,

FIRST VENTURES 87

which left him in danger of coming under the con
trol of morbid impulse. What he required, and
what most happily he found, was the serenity and
steadfastness of a nature, exalted like his own, but
glowing with an ardor which had other than purely
personal aim.

Miss White was a highly sensitive girl of a type
not unknown, especially at that time, in New Eng
land. Of delicate sensibility, she listened eagerly
to the voices rising about her which found their
choragus in Emerson. It was before the time of
much organization among women, but not before
the time when one and another woman, inheritors
of a refined conscience, stirred by the movement in
the air, sought to do justice to their convictions in
espousing this or that moral cause, not at all neces
sarily in public championship, but in the eloquent
zeal of domestic life. As her brother William was
to become an active reformer, so she fed her spirit
with aspirations for temperance, and for that abo
lition of slavery which was already beginning to
dominate the moral earnestness of the community,
holding all. other reforms as subordinate to this.
Lowell, seeing in her a Una, was quickened in the
spirit which had already been awakened, and in
stantly donned his armor as her Red Cross Knight.1

At this period there was a much greater homo
geneity in New England life than there has been
at any time since. The democratizing of society

1 It is very likely under the impetus given by Maria White that
Lowell took a place as delegate to the Anti-Slavery Convention
held in Boston, 17 November, 1840.

88 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

had been going on under favoring conditions, for
industry was still at the basis of order, less was
made of the distinction of wealth, more of the dis
tinction of education, the aristocratic element was
under the same general law of hard work, and a
proletariat class had not been created by an inflow
of the waste of Europe which inevitably accom
panied the sturdy peasants. The city had not yet
swept ardent youth into its rapids, and the simpli
city of modes of life was hardly more marked in
the country than in the town. Whoever recalls the
now old-fashioned tales by Miss Catherine Sedg-
wick will have a truthful picture of a social order
which seems Arcadian in the haze of sixty years
since.

It was, in some aspects, the culmination of the
ingrowing New England just before the Atlantic
ocean became contracted to a broad stream, the
West was clutched by iron hands, and all manner
of forces conspired to render this secluded corner
of the earth a cosmopolitan part of a larger com
munity.

One of the most characteristic phases of this life
was the attention paid by all classes to the awaken
ing which was going on in education, reform, poli
tics, and religion. Mr. Norton has printed a letter l
of Lowell's in which he gives an animated picture
of a temperance celebration in Watertown, at which
Maria White appeared in a sort of New England
translation of a Queen of the May, as the celebra
tion itself was a festival in the moral vernacular.

1 Letters, i. 07-69.

FIRST VENTURES 89

Lowell's own delight in her was unbounded, and
the scene as he depicts it, was a New England idyl.
Maria White and her brother belonged to a
group of young people on most friendly terms with
one another, and known offhand by themselves as
the Band. They lived in various places, Boston,
Cambridge, Watertown, Salem, and were con
stantly seeking occasions for familiar intercourse.
Dr. Hale has given a lively account of their fellow
ship and summons a witness who was herself a
member of the company.1 To this coterie Lowell
was now introduced, and the relations between him
and Miss White made the pair the centre of attrac
tion. Miss White's spirituelle beauty and poetic
temperament and Lowell's spontaneity of wit and
sentiment were heightened in the eyes of these
young people by the attachment between them, and
they were known with affectionate jesting as the
Queen and King of the Band. In the exalted air
upon which the two trod, stimulating each other,
their devotion came to have, by a paradox, an al
most impersonal character, as if they were crea
tures of romance ; their life was led thus in the
open, so much so that, as has been said more than
once, the letters exchanged by them were passed
about also among the other young people of the
circle.2 Be this as it may, the assertion is rendered

1 James Euasell Lowell and His Friends, pp. 72-76.

2 " I have enjoyed the society of my fair cousin Maria very
much. She has shown me several of James's letters, and I think
I never saw such perfect specimens of love-letters, — those in any
novel you ever read are perfectly indifferent compared to them.
Without being1 silly in the least, they are full of all the fervor and

90 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

credible by the highly charged atmosphere in which
they were living. The two young poets — for
Maria White was not only of poetic temperament,
but wrote verses, some of which found place in
current magazines — were lifted upon a platform
by their associates, and were themselves so open
in their consciousness of poetic thinking and act
ing that they took little pains to abscond from this
friendly publicity. It is a curious instance of free
dom from shamefacedness in so native a New Eng-
lander as Lowell, but his letters, his poems, and
common report, all testify to an ingenuousness of
sentiment at this time, which was a radical trait,
and less conspicuous later in life only because like
other men he became subject to convention.

But though Lowell lived in this exhilarated
state, he was not likely to be led away into any
wholly impracticable scheme of living. His own
good sense could be relied on, and his independ
ence of spirit, as could his detestation of debt,
which kept him all his life a frugal liver. He was,
besides, brought up sharply at this time by the
necessity suddenly laid on him to earn his living, if
he would be married, since his father, always gen
erous to him, had now lost almost all his personal
property, and was land poor ; it was clearly under
stood, too, that the young people must rely on
themselves for support. Fortunate was it for him
that he was to have a wife who shared to the full
his views on living. " It is easy enough," wrote

extatifieation -which you would expect from the most ardent lover."
— L. L. Thaxter to T. W. Higginson, 19 January, 1842.

FIRST VENTURES 91

Maria White to Levi Thaxter, "to be married —
the newspaper columns show us that every day;
but to live and be happy as simple King and
Queen without the gifts of fortune, this is, I con
fess, a triumph which suits my nature better."

Lowell, who had been lodging in Cambridge,
moved into Boston when he was established in
Mr. Loring's office, but in the spring of 1842 went
back to Elmwood to live. Dr. Lowell had returned
from Europe with his wife and daughter in the
early summer of 1840. It is probable that the re
turn of Lowell to his father's house was due to the
declining health of his mother, who showed symp
toms of that disorder of the brain which clouded
her last years, and is graphically depicted in her
son's poem, " The Darkened Mind." From this
time her husband and children watched her with
solicitude and tried various remedies. She was
taken on little journeys to Saratoga and elsewhere,
in search of restoration, but in vain. In this case,
as so often happens, the sufferer who draws largely
on one's sympathy is the faithful, despairing hus
band.1

Although Lowell had been admitted to the bar,
and was ready to practice, clients were slow in
coming, and with his resources in literature it was
natural enough that he should use his enforced
leisure in writing for publication. There were few

1 " I am obliged to stay at home whenever Father goes to Bos
ton, and as he usually goes thither on the four first days of the
week, I am rather closely prisoned." — J. R. L. to R. Carter, 31
December, 1843.

92 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

periodicals in America in 1840 that could afford
to pay their contributors, and the sums paid were
moderate. But the zeal of the editors was not
measured by their ability to reward contributors,
and both editors and writers fed a good deal at the
table of the Barmecides spread in the somewhat
ramshackle House of Fame. The Southern Lit
erary Messenger was one of these impecunious but
ambitious journals, and the editor teased Lowell
constantly for contributions. Lowell gave them
freely, for writing was his delight, and he was not
unwilling to have a hospitable and reputable maga
zine in which to print what he wrote, both for the
slight incentive which publication gave, and because
he could thus with little effort "make believe " that
he was a popular author. He used frequently
the signature Hugh Perceval. He liked the name
Perceval, which had been borne by his earliest
American ancestor, and regretted that it had not
been given him at his birth, as had then been pro
posed. In the Southern Literary Messenger he
could publish half personal poems to be read be
tween the lines by his intimate friends ; but he
grew impatient of this unprofitable business.

" Have you got the August S. L. M. yet ? " he
writes to Loring, 18 August, 1840. " I have not.
White 1 wrote to me a short time since that the
July and August numbers were coming out to
gether, and at the same time asking me to trans
late a long poem of Victor Hugo's. I have not
answered him yet. But when I do I shall tell him

1 Thomas W. White, the editor.

FIRST VENTURES 93

that ' reading and writing come by nature, but to
be a translator is the gift of Fortune,' so that if he
chooses to pay me he shall have translations. I
don't think I shall write any more for him. 'T is
a bad habit to get into for a poor man, this writing
for nothing. Perhaps if I hang off he may offer
me somewhat."

The publication of " A Year's Life " was a more
definite assertion of his place as a poet. He had
been encouraged to publish both by the confidence
of Miss White and by the practical aid of friends,
like his friend J. F. Heath, who engaged to secure
the sale of at least a hundred copies. Lowell
watched the fortunes of his first open venture
eagerly, from a conviction that it would have some
influence on his further efforts. " I have already,"
he writes to Loring, 18 February, 1841, " been
asked to write for an annual to be published in
Boston, and ' which is to be a fair specimen of
the arts in this country.' It is to be edited (sub
rosa) by Longfellow, Felton, Hillard, and that set.
Hawthorne and Emerson are writing for it, and
Bryant and Halleck have promised to write. The
pay for poetry is five dollars a page, at any rate,
and more if the work succeeds according to the
publishers' expectation. So you see my book has
done me some good, although it does not sell so
fast as it ought, considering how everybody praises
it. If you get a chance to persuade anybody to
buy it, do so. The praise I don't care so much
about, because I knew just how good and how bad
the book was before I printed it. But I wish, if

94 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

possible, to get out a second edition, which will do
me more good, as an author, than all the praise
and merit in the world. My father is so very
much pleased with the book that he wishes me to
publish a second edition at any rate, and he will pay
all expenses, and be responsible for its selling."

The little volume was the first fruits of Lowell's
poetic harvesting, and the promise it gave of poet
ical genius was by no means inconsiderable. In
his maturer judgment, to be sure, Lowell preserved
but seven of the thirty-three poems and two of the
thirty-five sonnets contained in it, — in all, thirty-
five of the one hundred and eighty-two pages of
the book, and had he been drawn off from poetry,
supposing this possible, the book would have been
reckoned as lightly in the general account of his
production as Motley's fiction was in his full mea
sure. But he was not drawn off from poetry, and
the early note here struck was a dominant one
afterward. In most poets of any consequence the
disciple is pretty sure to be evident in early work,
and Lowell in " A Year's Life " unmistakably
owned himself an ardent lover of Keats and to a
less degree of Tennyson, who had been caught up
by the lively circle in which he moved with the
eagerness of an American discovering, as one so
often did, the old world of contemporary England.
In copying Keats, Lowell was indeed copying the
Keats who copied, and it is not at all unlikely that
when he was enamored of " Fancy," " Lines on
the Mermaid Tavern," " Robin Hood," and the
like, and echoed them faintly in " The Bobolink,"

FIRST VENTURES 95

"lanthe," "Irene," and others, he was harking
back also to Wither and other Elizabethans whom
Keats loved, and whose light touch was caught so
deftly by Milton in his " L' Allegro " and " II Pen-
seroso." Be this as it may, Lowell was most out
spoken at this time in his admiration of Keats.
He had become acquainted with him, as we have
seen, in that volume which contained the triad,
Coleridge, Keats, and Shelley, which was the foun
tain of modern English poetry to which so many
thirsty Americans went. Lord Houghton's me
moir of Keats had not appeared, and Lowell him
self, in 1840, contemplated writing a life, going so
far as to concoct a letter to Keats's brother George,
which, however, he never sent. His admiration,
besides taking the form of frank imitation, dis
played itself in his early sonnet, " To the Spirit of
Keats," which he contributed to the New York lit
erary journal Arctnrus, conducted by the brothers
Duyckinck. His letter to Evert A. Duyckinck,
accompanying the sonnet, is interesting for its trib
ute to the two modern English poets who, after
Spenser, were his nearest friends.

BOSTON, Dec. 5, 1841.

MY DEAR SIR, — I address you rather than your
brother editor, because I judge that the poetical
department of Arcturus is more especially under
your charge. I have to thank you for your sym
pathizing notice of my verses last spring. I thought
then that you might like to have a contribution
occasionally from me, but other engagements which

96 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

it were tedious to specify hindered me from doing
what my sympathy with the aim of your magazine
dictated. I subscribed for your Arcturus before I
had seen a number of it (though I can ill afford
many such indulgences of taste) because I liked
the spirit of your prospectus. For the same reason
I sent you my volume — of which I sent but a bare
half-dozen to " the press " — because I despise our
system of literary puffing. Your notice of Keats,
in the number for this month, a poet whom I espe
cially love and whom I consider to be one of the
true old Titan brood — made me wish to see two
of my own sonnets enshrined in the same volume.
One of them you will see is addressed to the same
" marvellous day." I cannot help thinking that
you will like both of them.1

In your " News Gong " I see that you suggest a
reprint of Tennyson. I wish you would say in
your next that he is about to reprint a new and
correct edition of his poems with many new ones
which will appear in a few months. I think it
would be a pity to reprint his poems at all — for he
is poor and that would deprive him of what little
profit he might make by their sale in this country
— especially would it be wrong to reprint an incor
rect edition. (Moxon will be his publisher.)

I do not wish you to state your authority for this

— but you may depend on it, for my authority is

the poet himself. I have the great satisfaction of

thinking that the publication is in some measure

1 The sonnet, " To the Spirit of Keats," was the first of the
two ; the other was " Sunset and Moonshine," not retained by the
poet in his final collection.

FIRST VENTURES 97

owing to myself, for it was by my means that he
was written to about it, and he says that "his
American friends " are the chief cause of his re
printing.

Wishing you all success in the cause of true
and good literature,

I remain your friend,

J. R. LOWELL.

The little book was received with an attention
which seems to suggest the paucity of hopeful liter
ature at the time and the Marchioness spirit of the
critics. Lowell's eager friends came forward with
their notices, but there were then fewer journals
even than now that could be looked to for careful
judgment. In Graham's Magazine there was a
long account of the book headed " A New School
of Poetry at hand," and the writer, who hides be
hind the letter C., after crediting Lowell with
ideality, enthusiasm, love for his fellow-men, fresh
ness, and delicacy, finds fault with him chiefly for
affectation of language and carelessness ; but he
welcomes him as the herald of a new school which
is to be humanitarian and idealistic. It is amusing
to find our familiar friend, the "great original
American poem," looked for confidently from this
new poet. Lowell warmed himself with this praise.1

1 " [Mrs. Longfellow] was the first stranger that ever said a
kind word to me about my poems. She spoke to me of my Year's
Life, then just published. I had then just emerged from the dark
est and unhappiest period of my life, and was peculiarly sensitive
to sympathy. My volume, I knew, was crude and immature, and
did not do me justice ; but I knew also that there was a heart in
it, and I was grateful for her commendation." — J. R. L. to H. W.
Longfellow, 13 August, 1845.

98 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

The most serviceable vehicle for Lowell's literary
endeavors at this time was The Boston Miscellany
projected by Nathan Hale, Lowell's associate in
Harvardiana, and published by two young Boston
men, Bradbury and Soden. The Miscellany had
the short life characteristic of American literary
magazines in the early half of the century, but it
showed the sound literary judgment of its editor in
the list of contributors he attracted. Lowell en
tered heartily into the plans for the new magazine.
He wrote for it, among other things, a sketch, " My
First Client," which is in its form as near an ap
proach to fiction as he ever attempted, and is a
slightly embellished narrative of his own clientless
experience as a lawyer. He thought so ill of it
that he refused to allow it to be reprinted, a few
years later, in one of the annuals then popular.

The most significant contribution which he made
to the Miscellany was a series of papers on the Old
English Dramatists, begun anonymously, but con
tinued with his name. These were readings in
Massinger, Marlowe, and others, with running com
ments, and reflected the keen interest which he
took then and all his life in that great quarry of
noble thoughts and brave images. The series was
the forerunner of his labors in the field of criti
cism of literature, and the pleasure which he took
in the work, as well as the appreciation which the
papers received, gave him a hopeful sense that he
might trust to letters for support, and abandon the
law, which he hated, and which naturally returned
the compliment. In September, 1842, he had be-

FIRST VENTURES 99

come so sanguine that, after mysteriously hinting
at an even more substantial means of support, he
wrote to his friend Lorinar : —

O

" I think I may safely reckon on earning four
hundred dollars by my pen the next year, which
will support me. Between this and June, 1843, I
think I shall have freed myself of debt and become
an independent man. I am to have fifteen dollars
a poem from the Miscellany, ten dollars from Gra
ham, and I have made an arrangement with the
editor of the Democratic Review, by which I shall
probably get ten or fifteen dollars more. Pro
spects are brightening, you see."

It was the prophecy of a sanguine young man,
but unhappily the plan which seemed to him to
promise most was instead to plunge him into debt.
The Miscellany had closed its short career by
merging itself in the Arcturus of New York, and
taking courage from the brilliancy of the journal
rather than caution from its brevity of life, Lowell,
in company with Mr. Robert Carter, projected a
new Boston literary and critical magazine to be is
sued monthly. The Prospectus has all the bravery
and gallant dash of these forlorn hopes in litera
ture.

The contents of each number will be entirely
Original, and will consist of articles chiefly from
American authors of the highest reputation.

The object of the Subscribers in establishing
The Pioneer, is to furnish the intelligent and
reflecting portion of the Reading Public with a

100 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

rational substitute for the enormous quantity of
thrice-diluted trash, in the shape of namby-pamby
love tales and sketches, which is monthly poured
out to them by many of our popular magazines, —
and to offer instead thereof, a healthy and manly
Periodical Literature, whose perusal will not neces
sarily involve a loss of time and a deterioration of
every moral and intellectual faculty.

The Critical Department of The Pioneer will
be conducted with great care and impartiality, and
while satire and personality will be sedulously
avoided, opinions of merit or demerit will be can
didly and fearlessly expressed.

The Pioneer will be issued punctually on the
day of publication, in the principal cities of the
Union. Each number will contain 48 pages, royal
octavo, double columns, handsomely printed on fine
paper, and will be illustrated with Engravings of
the highest character, both on wood and steel.

Terms : Three Dollars a year, payable, in all
cases, in advance. The usual discount made to
Agents. Communications for the Editors, letters,
orders, &c., must be addressed, postpaid, to the
Publishers, 67 Washington St. (opposite the Post
Office,) Boston.

LELAND & WHITING.

October 15th, 1842.

The publishers appear to have had no pecuniary
interest in the venture, the editors being the pro
prietors as well. Mr. Carter was a young man of
Lowell's age, living at the time in Cambridge,
where he afterward married a daughter of Mr.

FIRST VENTURES 101

George Nichols, long known for his scholarly at
tainments as printer and corrector of the press, and
for a short time also as a publisher. Mr. Carter was
a man of wide reading and tenacious memory and a
good writer, as his breezy book, " A Summer Cruise
on the Coast of New England," testifies. His en
cyclopaedic mind stood him in good stead when,
later, he held a position in the publishing house of
D. Appleton & Co., and superintended the "New
American Encyclopaedia. "

The Pioneer, though it might be called a con
tinuation of The Boston Miscellany, had character
istics of its own which show that its conductors had
a clearly defined ideal in their minds and did not
lack the courage and energy to pursue it. The Mis
cellany had made concessions to the supposed taste
of the day, and had tried to catch subscribers with
fashion plates and articles, while really caring only
for good literature. The Pioneer discarded all
adventitious aid, and, with fidelity to its name, de
termined to break its way through the woods of
ignorance and prejudice to some fair land beyond.
Upon its cover page it bore a sentence from Bacon :
" Reform, therefore, without bravery or scandal of
former times and persons ; but yet set it down to
thyself as well to create good precedents as to fol
low them." It is easy to see that Lowell, with his
love of good letters, and with a zeal for reform just
now quickened by the fine fervor of Maria White,
meant with his individual means to do very much
what the proprietors and conductors of the Atlan
tic Monthly attempted on a larger scale fifteen

102 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

years later. But those fifteen years made a good
deal of difference in the attitude of men toward the
greatest of national evils, and in 1843 Lowell was
not likely to be a trenchant political writer, or to
think of literature and anti-slavery sentiment in the
same breath. The vague spirit of reform which
stirred him was rather a recurrence to fundamental
ideas of freedom which made him impatient of for
mality and provincialism in literature, and led him
to associate American political ideas with large
independence of intellectual life. He had been
breathing the atmosphere of the spacious England
of the dramatists, and it was the nature of this lit
erature which attracted him, as it was its art which
drew Lamb, Hazlitt, and Keats.1 Hence, when he
planned the Pioneer, he was not projecting a jour
nal of national reform under the mask of litera
ture ; he was ambitious to bear his testimony to
the ideal of a national literature springing from
a soil of political independence, and akin to great
literature the world over. In a word, he knew
the exhilaration of a native spirit, not in spite but
because of his feeding upon great and not super
ficial, modish letters, and he was eager to demon
strate both creatively and critically the possibility
of a genuine and unaffected American literature.
In the Introduction to the Pioneer, for every new
journal then had its salutatory, — and the valedic-

" Especially grateful is the praise of one in whose conversa
tion I have marked a hearty appreciation of those greatest reform
ers, our glorious old English Poets." — J. li. L. to Robert Carter,
2 September, 1812.

FIRST VENTURES 103

tory was likely to follow shortly, — he sets forth
this principle of a native literature. After com
plaining of the derivative character of current criti
cism and opinions, — derived, that is, from the
latest English quarterlies and monthlies, — he con
tinues : —

" We are the farthest from wishing to see what
many so ardently pray for, namely, a National lit
erature : for the same mighty lyre of the human
heart answers the touch of the master in all ages
and in every clime, and any literature, as far as it
is national, is diseased, inasmuch as it appeals to
some climatic peculiarity, rather than to the uni
versal nature. Moreover, everything that tends
to encourage the sentiment of caste, to widen the
boundary between races, and so to put farther off
the hope of one great brotherhood, should be stead
ily resisted by all good men. But we do long for
a natural literature. One green leaf, though of
the veriest weed, is worth all the crape and wire
flowers of the daintiest Paris milliners. For it is
the glory of nature that in her least part she gives
us all, and in that simple love-token of hers we
may behold the type of all her sublime mysteries ;
as in the least fragment of the true artist we dis
cern the working of the same forces which culmi
nate gloriously in a Hamlet or a Faust. We would
no longer see the spirit of our people held up as a
mirror to the Old World ; but rather lying like
one of our own inland oceans, reflecting not only
the mountain and the rock, the forest and the red
man, but also the steamboat and the rail car, the

104 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

cornfield and the factory. Let us learn that ro
mance is not married to the past, that it is not the
birthright of ferocious ignorance and chivalric bar
barity, but that it ever was and is an inward qual
ity, the darling child of the sweetest refinements
and most gracious amenities of peaceful gentleness,
and that it can never die till only water runs in
these red rivers of the heart, that cunning adept
which can make vague cathedrals with blazing
oriels and streaming spires out of our square meet
ing-boxes, —

" ' Whose rafters sprout upon the shady side.'

" In this country where freedom of thought does
not shiver at the cold shadow of Spielberg (unless
we name this prison of ' public opinion ' so), there
is no danger to be apprehended from an excess of
it. It is only where there is no freedom that an
archy is to be dreaded. The mere sense of freedom
is of too fine and holy a nature to consist with in
justice and wrong. We would fain have our jour
nal, in some sort at least, a journal of progress,
one that shall keep pace with the spirit of the age,
and sometimes go near its deeper heart. Yet,
whrle we shall aim at that gravity which is becom
ing of a manly literature, we shall hope also to
satisfy that lighter and sprightlier element of the
soul, without whose due culture the character is
liable to degenerate into a morose bigotry and self
ish precisianism. To be one exponent of a young
spirit which shall aim at power through gentleness,
the only means for its secure attainment, and in

FIRST VENTURES 105

which freedom shall be attempered to love by a
reverence for all beauty wherever it may exist, is
our humble hope. . . ."

Here was a literary creed, expressed in no very
exact formulas, and really declarative of little more
than an individual purpose that the Pioneer should
contain good and not dull or imitative literature.
A good beginning was made, for the three numbers
which were published contained poems and papers
by Dr. Parsons, *Story, Poe, Hawthorne, Jones
Very, John Neal, John S. Dwight, and the two
editors. Lowell continued his studies in the Old
English Dramatists, printed several poems, and
wrote apparently much of the criticism, but there
were no papers of a directly didactic character ; it
was clear that the editor relied on criticism for a
medium of aggressive preaching of sound literary
doctrine. Here also Lowell had his opportunity
to fly the flag of anti-slavery, and he did it with a
fine chivalry in a notice of Longfellow's " Poems on
Slavery," when he used the occasion to pay glowing
tribute to the earlier fighters. Garrison, " the half-
inspired Luther of this reform, a man too remark
able to be appreciated in his generation, but whom
the future will recognize as a great and wonderful
spirit ; " Whittier, " the fiery Koerner of this spir
itual warfare, who, Scaevola-like, has sacrificed on
the altar of duty that right hand which might have
made him acknowledged as the most passionate
lyrist of his time ; " the " tenderly-loving Maria
Child, the author of that dear book, ' Philothea,'
a woman of genius, who lives with humble content

106 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

in the intellectual Coventry to which her conscien
tiousness has banished her — a fate the hardest for
genius to bear. Nor ought the gentle spirit of
Follen, a lion with a lamb's heart, to be forgotten,
whose fiery fate, from which the mind turns horror-
stricken, was perhaps to his mild nature less dread
ful than that stake and fagot of public opinion, in
dragging him to which many whom he loved were
not inactive, for silence at such times is action."

Lowell threw himself into this literary venture
with resolution and hope. He had the double
motive of making a vehicle for sound and generous
literature, and of securing for himself a rational
means of support. Those nearest to him watched
the experiment with solicitude, for magazine mak
ing on a small scale was as perilous then as it is now
on a scale of magnitude. His sister, Mrs. Putnam,
wrote him a most anxious letter called out by the
fact that her brother was in New York and Carter
in charge, a man too easy and good-natured she
thought for such a position. She begged him to
consider that his first number was better than his
second, and that in turn seemed likely to be better
than the third, and she dreaded a decline in the
magazine. As for Miss White, she looked upon
the scheme, when it was taking shape, with mingled
pride and anxiety. She shared Lowell's lively
trust in the pioneer character of the journal, but
she had a prudent mind, and saw with a woman's
instinct the possibility of failure, where Lowell
would listen to nothing but the note of success.

The Pioneer lived but three months. The os-

FIRST VENTURES 107

tensible cause of its failure was the sudden and
lamentable breakdown of its chief supporter, as
shown in the following card printed at the close of
the third number.

" The absence of any prose in the present num
ber of The Pioneer from the pen of Mr. Lowell,
and the apparent neglect of many letters and
contributions addressed to him personally, will be
sufficiently explained by stating that, since the
tenth of January, he has been in the city of New
York in attendance upon Dr. Elliot, the distin
guished oculist, who is endeavoring to cure him of
a severe disease of the eyes, and that the medical
treatment to which he is necessarily subjected pre
cludes the use of his sight except to a very limited
extent. He will, however, probably be enabled, in
time for the fourth number, to resume his essays on
the Poets and Dramatists, and his general super
vision of the magazine. E,. C."

It is plain that when the third number appeared
the conductors expected to bring out a fourth, but
the enforced abstention from work of the principal
editor and writer and the lack of resources in
money made the discontinuance of the magazine
inevitable.1 In spite, however, of the disastrous

1 Mr. Woodberry, in editing " Lowell's Letters to Poe," in
Scribner's Monthly for August, 1894, explains the situation thus :
" The contract bound Lowell and Carter to furnish the publishers
five thousand copies on the twentieth of each month under a pen
alty of five hundred dollars in case of failure and the publishers
to take that number at a certain price. The March number was
eight days late, and the publishers, in the face of what was prob
ably seen to be an unfortunate speculation, claimed the forfeit
but offered to waive it if the contract should be altered so as to

208 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

experience and the debt which it entailed, the activ
ity of mind which the venture called forth was
worth much to Lowell. He had not a specially
orderly or methodical habit, and he lacked thus
the equipment which an editor requires, but he had
great fertility, and was under an impulse which at
this time he turned to account in literature. Could
he have been associated with some well organized
nature, it is not impossible that the Pioneer would
have become established on a sound basis and have
been the vehicle for Lowell's creative and critical
work in literature. Such work would have at
tracted the best that was to be had in America,
and the periodical might have been an important
factor in the intellectual life of the day.

The persistence with which the magazine idea
was exploited hints at the possibilities which lay
for a rising literature in this particular form. The
vigorous John Neal wrote to Lowell when he was
projecting the Pioneer : " Persevere ; be bold and
fear not. A great change is foretelling itself in
the literature of the day. Magazines are to super
sede newspapers, and newspapers novels among
light readers." The criticism which Lowell wrote
or commanded for the Pioneer was frank, fearless,
and sure to arrest attention. It pointed the way,
and might easily have done much to shape the
course of letters and art. In the absence of such

require them to take only so many copies as they could sell.
The result was that the editors were obliged to stop printing- from
a lack of credit, and were left with a large indebtedness for manu
facture as well as to contributors. It appears from Poe's letters
that he was paid his small claim a year later."

FIRST VENTURES 109

a serviceable vehicle, Lowell was left to his own
resources, and having no organ at hand he dropped
criticism for the time and concentrated his mind on
his poetry.

As Mr. Carter's apologetic note intimates, Lowell
was obliged to go to New York early in January,
1843, for treatment at the hands of the oculist,
Dr. Elliot. A few extracts from his letters to
Mr. Carter during his absence show something of
his life and interests in this enforced absence.

January 15, 1843. . . . My course of life is this.
Every morning I go to Dr. Elliot's (who, by the
way, is very kind) and wait for my turn to be
operated upon. This sometimes consumes a great
deal of time, the Dr. being overrun with patients.
After being made stone blind for the space of fif
teen minutes, I have the rest of the day to myself.

Handbills of the Pioneer in red and black
with a spread eagle at the head of them face me
everywhere. I could not but laugh to see a dray
man standing with his hands in his pockets dili
gently spelling it out, being attracted thereto
doubtless by the bird of America, which probably
led him to think it a proclamation of the Presi
dent — a delusion from which he probably did not
awake after perusing the document. ... I shall
endeavor while I am here to write an article on
Pope. Something I will send you for the next
number, besides what I may possibly glean from
others. A new magazine has just been started
here, but it is illiberal and will probably fail.

110 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

January 17, 1843. I shall only write a word
or two, as I have already been writing, and my
eyes, having been operated on yesterday with the
knife, must be used charily. ... I hope to hear
better accounts of money matters in your next.
Explain as to the 500 copies you speak of as sold
the day before. Remember how interesting the
least particle of news is to me, and I may be at
home under three weeks from this, though I hope
to be in a fortnight. . . .

January 19. So you are fairly bewitched ! l
Well, I might have expected it, but still it was no
reason that you should have told me so little about
the magazine. / should not have talked wholly
about one individual — of course not. / should
not have been bewitched. . . .

Have you got any copy for the third number?
Do not ask any conservatives to write, for it will
mar the unity of the magazine. We shall be surer
of success if we maintain a uniform course, and
have a decided tendency either one way or the
other. We shall, at least, gain more influence in
that way.

I have picked up a poem by Harry Franco
against capital punishment. It has a good deal of
humor in it and is striking. A woodcut of a poor
devil hanging with the crows discussing his fate
will perhaps accompany it. Prose I have got no
scent of as yet. . . .

January [20]. I have received all your let
ters, and like to have you send by express. I

1 Carter had just been to see Maria White.

FIRST VENTURES 111

should like to see Miss Gray's and Miss Pea-
body's articles before they go to press. I am a
better judge of that kind of merchandise than you.
The second number is a good one, but full of mis
prints. The notices in the cover, if printed at all,
should have been expurgated. See to it next time,
and do not let your kind heart seduce you into
printing any more puffs of me personally. What
do you mean by that notice of Emerson ? I shall
have to write to him. Your notice of De Quincey
was excellent.

I send herewith a poem of Miss Barrett1 which
came with the letters you sent me. She sent three
others, and promises more in a very pleasant let
ter. I shall send on quite a budget of prose, I
hope, soon, but cannot use my eyes much. I am
going to answer an article on the copyright ques
tion by O'Sullivan in the forthcoming Democratic
Review. I must see proofs of Miss Barrett and
all my own pieces. ... I must not write any more
or I shall not get home these six months.

January 22. ... My dear, good, kindest, best
friend, you know that I would not write a word
that should knowingly pain your loving heart. So
forgive whatever there has been in my other let
ters to trouble, and only reflect how anxious I must
naturally feel, away from home as I am, and left a
great part of the time to the solitude of my own
thoughts by the total deprivation of the use of my
eyes.

Willis is under Dr. E.'s care also, and yester-

l " The Maiden's Death."

112 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

day introduced himself to me, and said all manner
of kind things. He had meant to write to me,
giving me his experience in editing, and had long
been anxious to know me, &c., &c. This morning
he came and took me to church with him, and alto
gether overwhelms me with attention. His wife is
a very nice pretty little Englishwoman, with a very
sweet voice. W. said he wrote the notice in the
Jonathan as the most judicious way of helping the
magazine, giving your own philosophic theory as
to its possible results. . . .

January 24. ... I must write an article for
the next number, and yet I do not see very well
how I am to do it. For I can scarcely get through
one letter without pain, and everything that I write
retards my case and so keeps me the longer here.
But I love Keats so much that I think I can write
something good about him.

Willis continues very kind, and I begin to
think that he really likes me. At least he said
the same to Dr. E. about me that he told me to
my face. He told the Dr. (I copy it the more
readily that I know it will delight yoii) that I had
written the most remarkable poem that had been
written in this country, and that I was destined to
be the brightest star that had yet risen in Ameri
can literature. He told me, also, that I was more
popular and more talked about and read at this
time than any other poet in the land, and he is
going (or was) to write an article in the Jonathan
to that effect. These things you must keep in
your own heart. He promises to help the Pioneer

FIRST VENTURES 113

in every way he can, and he will be able to do us
a great deal of good, as he has last week taken
half the ownership of the Jonathan on condition
of solely editing it. He talks of paying me to
write letters for him from Boston. . . .

John Neal lectures here to-night. I have not
seen him, and I do not know whether I shall hear
him, for if I get a package from you to-day, as I
hope I shall, I shall hardly have 25 cents left to
buy a ticket with. So you think we have suc
ceeded. They are the pleasantest words I have
heard since I have been here. But we must not
feel too sure yet. I think we shall succeed. Folks
here (some of them) say that we shall beyond our
utmost expectation. . . .

Saturday. . . . You shall have some copy
from me on Wednesday morning if I get blind
by it. Where is Brownson ? Don't print non
sense. Better not be out till the middle of March.
But you are only trying to frighten me. Do not
print nonsense, for God's sake. Print the history
of Mesmerism. Write an article on Japan. If I
were to read over your letters again in order to
answer them categorically, I should not be able to
use my eyes for a week. You do not recollect that
I undergo an application or an operation every
day. If I could see you for ten minutes I could
arrange all. I perhaps may come on and return
hither again. Do not hint this to any one, for if
Maria heard of it, she would be expecting anx
iously every day. I am sick to death of this place,
yet it does me good spiritually to stay here. I

114 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

must not write any more. In your next letter ask
all questions and I will answer. . . .

Lowell stayed on in New York on account of his
eyes till the end of February. At a period when
Mrs. Child could gravely write and publish in a
book " Letters from New York," to go to New
York from Cambridge was nearly equivalent to
a winter abroad. As his letters to Carter show,
with the disabilities under which he labored Lowell
could do little at reading or writing, and he used
the opportunity for social occupation. Page he
had already come to know, and he had made the
acquaintance through the Miscellany of Charles F.
Briggs, whom now he took into warm friendship.
Mr. Briggs was a diligent man of letters, best known
to the public of that day as " Harry Franco," and
through him Lowell fell in with many writers
and book people. But he was most impatient to
return, and now that his magazine had ceased he
found himself with no routine labors, but with a
mind full to overflowing.

The real pursuit of Lowell daring 1843 was
poetry, and poetry of a lofty character. In the
Ode which he wrote in 1841 beginning, —

" In the old days of awe and keen-eyed wonder " —

he had outlined the function of the poet ; and the
whole set of his nature in the months between his
engagement and his marriage was in the direction
of poetic earnestness. His conception was domi
nated by moral enthusiasm : the preacher in him

FIRST VENTURES 115

was always thrusting himself to the front, and the
reformer of the day sometimes masqueraded in his
verse in very antique forms. But his genuine love
of art above all his unfailing apprehension of
poetry as an end in itself saved him from a merely
utilitarian notion of his high calling. And it is
safe to say that he never was so happy as when he
was abandoning himself to the full enjoyment of
poetic composition. He diverted the streams of
love and of anti-slavery fervor into this full current,
and could say of his " Prometheus " that it was
" overrunning with true radicalism and anti-slav
ery ; " but the exhilaration which fanned his wings
was the consciousness of youth and love finding an
outlet in the natural voice of poetry. " I was never
so happy as now," he writes to Loring, 15 June,
after telling of his " Prometheus " and " A Legend
of Brittany," on which he was at work. " I see
Maria every other day. I am embowered in leaves,
have a voluntary orchestra of birds and bees and
frogs, and a little family of chickens to whom I
have a sort of feeling of paternity, and begin to
believe I had some share in begetting them."

Page painted Lowell's portrait when he was in
New York and exhibited it in the spring. This
picture is at once a likeness of the poet and an
expression of the painter. Page was an idealist
who found a most congenial subject in Lowell.
Out of the dark canvass — for the painter, pursu
ing the elusive phantom of a recovery of the art
of the Venetians, succeeded at any rate in giving to
uis work an ancient air — there looks forth a face

116 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

which is the very apparition of poetry. Far re
moved from the sentimental aspect, it has depth
of feeling, a serene assurance, and a Shakespearean
ideality. It is not difficult to see that Page was
not painting in Lowell a young Cambridge author,
but the student of the English dramatists and the
inheritor of all the ages of poetry. To his own
neighbors and friends Lowell had much of this air
in his presence. His flowing chestnut hair falling
in rich masses from an equally dividing line, his
unshorn face, his eyes with their kindly wistful
look, his tremulous mouth, — all served to sepa
rate him in appearance from common men and to
mark him as an unusual person.

How affectionately Lowell regarded Page and
what admiration he had for his genius may be read
in the dedication to him which was prefixed to his
" Poems " issued in 1843 and retained in later col
lections. The frankness with which he avows his
love for his friend is a witness to that openness of
Lowell's nature which we have already noticed,
and the terms in which he speaks of Page's art and
of the artistic faith which they held in common
give a hint of the basis of their comradery. Low
ell disclaimed any special knowledge of painting,
and always brought to bear, in his discussions on
art, the principles which he had learned through
his devotion to the art' of poetry. In the relation
of the two men to each other one is half tempted
to recall the friendship of Keats and Haydon. In
each case the poet believed in the painter less by
reason of the work done than because of the ideals

Mr. Lowell in

FIRST VENTURES 119

sion — an intensity so great that one almost holds
one's breath as he reads. Lowell, as we know, rarely
essayed anything in the nature of story-telling ; the
dramatic faculty was not his, and keen as was his
appreciation of the power of the elder dramatists,
his criticism shows that he dwelt most emphatically
on those passages and lines which disclose poetic
beauty, rather than the features of construction.
But Keats's warmth and richness of decorative
painting appealed to him with peculiar force at a
time when he himself had come out into the sun
shine and was intoxicated with his own happiness.
It is clear that when he was writing " A Legend
of Brittany " he was revelling in the possession of
poetic fancy, and drawing himself to the height of
his enjoyment of pure poetry unmixed with ele
ments of didacticism. He wrote to G. B. Loring,
15 June, 1843, " I am now at work on a still
longer poem [than " Prometheus "] in the ottava
rima to be the first in my forthcoming volume. I
feel more and more assured every day that I shall
yet do something that will keep my name (and
perhaps my body) alive. My wings were never so
light and strong as now. So hurrah for a niche
and a laurel." The poem did not apparently call
out any strong response, nor has it, I suspect, ever
been read with very great admiration — certainly it
cannot for a moment be compared in popularity
with " The Vision of Sir Launfal," which followed
five years later, and the explanation is perhaps to
be found mainly in its derivative character, even
though readers might not be acutely aware how far
it owed its origin to Keats.

120 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

Mr. Briggs, who was the stanchest of Lowell's
literary friends at this time, wrote with enthusiasm
of the volume, using terms of admiration which
must have been grateful indeed, since they were
charged with discrimination and just appreciation ;
but he was frank and honest in his friendly judg
ment, and he wrote to Lowell of " A Legend of
Brittany : " " It is too warm, rich, and full of sweet
sounds and sights ; the incense overpowers me, and
the love and crime, and prayers and monks and
glimpses of spirits oppress me. I am too much a
clod of earth to mingle well in such elements. I
feel while reading it as though I were lying upon
a bed of down with a canopy of rose-colored silk
above me, with gleams of sunshine darting in the
room and half revealing and at times more than
revealing strange figures painted upon the walls of
my chamber. But I do not wonder that M. W.
should like it. It is the proper reading for pure-
minded loving creatures, from whose eyes know
ledge with its hard besom has not yet swept away
the golden cobwebs of fancy. I like her the better
myself for liking it." :

This long poem is not the only one in the book
which springs from pure delight in poetic imagina
tion ; but it is by far the most full and unalloyed
expression of this pleasure. When one reads, how
ever, such a poem as " Rhoscus," with its preface

1 In a letter written after he had at last seen Miss White, Mr.
Briggs writes : '' I hardly know what I could say to M. W. unless
what I felt inclined to when I saw her, ' Sancta Maria, ora pro

FIRST VENTURES 121

apologizing for so much paganism, and its applica
tion, and especially when one reads " Prometheus,"
one is aware how largely Lowell was dominated,
even in this time when his soul was flushed with
the sense of beauty and awake to the tendrils it
was putting forth, by a strong purpose to read the
lesson of beauty and love to his fellows. The seri
ousness of life was indeed charged with an exalted
meaning by the revelation which came to him when
he was admitted into the intimate companionship
of a woman who had in her something of the spirit
of a prophetess, but it would be untrue to say that
Maria White handed him the torch ; she kindled
to a greater brilliancy that which he already held,
and his love transmuted the vague stirrings of his
own nature into more definite purpose. Keats, to
refer again to one with whom Lowell certainly had
spiritual kinship, was mildly affected somewhat in
the same way by the friendship which he formed in
his impressionable years with Hunt and his circle,
and if we could imagine Fanny Brawne a Mary
Wollstonecraf t, we might speculate on the effect she
would have had on his poetry. Even Keats, with
his passionate devotion to beauty, could dig a sub
terranean passage under the opening of the third
book of " Endymion " for the purpose of blowing up
the " present ministers ; " and Lowell, taking the
world-worn myth of Prometheus, could write into it
reflections apposite to what he regarded as a tremen
dous upheaving force just ready to manifest itself
in society. The poem of " Prometheus," however,
justly stands high in the estimation of Lowell's

122 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

readers, for the thought involved in it rises above
the level of a didactic utterance, and carries with it
an impersonation of human dignity which saves it
from the reproach of making the myth a mere text
for a modern discourse. The poem is the most com
prehensive and largest expression of the mind of
the poet at this period of emancipation, and the
fine images with which it abounds spring from the
subject itself and are not mere decorations.

Here, again, a comparison of " Prometheus " with
Keats's " Hyperion " illustrates the infusion of
moral ardor which separates the disciple from the
master. Keats summed up his poetic philosophy
in the lines —

" For 't is the eternal law
That first in beauty should be first in might," —

and he was fain to see the operation of Nature's
law by which one race of conquerors would dispos
sess another.

" So on our heels a fresh perfection treads."

Lowell, speculating on the eternal struggle, figured
in " Prometheus," of right and wrong, of darkness
and light, bids Jove heed that he —

" And all strength shall crumble except love " —

and sees in a vision —

" Peaceful commonwealths where sunburnt Toil
Reaps for itself the rich earth made its own."

Mr. Briggs, writing to him on the appearance of
the poem in the Democratic fieview, reminds him
that he had read a bit of it when visiting him in
his house at Staten Island, and adds : " But I did

FIRST VENTURES 123

not anticipate that you could or would lengthen
out those few lines into a poem so full of majesty
and sweetness. So far as my observation will allow
me to judge, it is the best sustained effort of the
American Muse. The structure of the verse is ex
ceedingly fine to my ear, although it may not be as
acceptable to the public ear as the almost emascu
late smoothness of Bryant, to which it has been
accustomed. The bold bright images with which
'Prometheus' abounds would be sufficient of them
selves to give you a name among the wielders of
the pen, but the noble and true spirit of Philosophy
which they help to develop makes them appear of
secondary importance, and gives you a claim to a
higher renown than the mere word-mongers of
Parnassus can ever aspire to." Lowell, in replying
to this letter, wrote : " My ' Prometheus ' has not
received a single public notice yet, though I have
been puffed to repletion for poems without a tithe
of its merit. Your letter was the first sympathy I
received. Although such great names as Goethe,
Byron, and Shelley have all handled the subject in
modern times, you will find that I have looked at
it from a somewhat new point of view. I have
made it radical* and I believe that no poet in this
age can write much that is good unless he give him
self up to this tendency. For radicalism has now
for the first time taken a distinctive and acknow
ledged shape of its own. So much of its spirit as
poets in former ages have attained (and from their
purer organization they could not fail of some) was
by instinct rather than by reason. It has never till

124 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

now been seen to be one of the two great wings
that upbear the universe." In the same letter he
says : " The proof of poetry is, in my mind, whether
it reduces to the essence of a single line the vague
philosophy which is floating in all men's minds, and
so renders it portable and useful and ready to the
hand. Is it not so ? At least no poem ever makes
me respect its author which does not in some way
convey a truth of philosophy."

In the same temper which produced " Prome
theus," he wrote what he regarded as in some way
a companion piece, " A Glance behind the Cur
tain," in which he imagines a conversation between
Cromwell and Hampden. There is no seeming en
deavor at characterization of either figure, dra
matically, but the poem, which is an attempt to read
Cromwell's mind, is a stirring and indignant de
mand that Freedom shall do her perfect work.

" Freedom hath yet a work for me to do," he
makes Cromwell exclaim : —

" So speaks that inward voice which never yet
Spake falsely, when it urged the spirit on
To noble deeds for country and mankind.
And for success, I ask no more than this, —
To bear unflinching witness to the truth.
All true whole men succeed ; for what is worth
Success's name, unless it be the thought,
The inward surety, to have carried out
A noble purpose to a noble end,
Although it be the gallows or the block ?
'T is only Falsehood that doth ever need
These outward shows of gain to bolster her."

Thus, in the guise of Cromwell, speaks the young
man dimly conscious, in a travailing age, of work

FIRST VENTURES 125

needing to be done, and stirred too by the high
emotions of the woman he loved, yet not quite able
to translate his vague desire to be a champion of
Truth into deeds. To be sure, at the close of this
poem he remembers that Cromwell was the friend
of Milton,

" A man not second among those who lived
To show us that the poet's lyre demands
An arm of tougher sinew than the sword."

In the dreams of his youth I think he saw himself
playing a part in the drama that was opening, and
wondering how he could wield the pen so as to
make it a weapon for slaying wrong or defending
right. Yet direct as he might wish his attack to
be, he was held back by an equally potent impulse
to fulfil the demands of art. " A Chippewa Le
gend," in this same volume, though used as a par
able for an impassioned denunciation of slavery,
has touches of nature in the unfolding of the story
which show clearly how much delight he took in
the story itself, and how easily he might have
stopped short as a singer, if the preacher in him
had not made the song turn out a sermon.

The autobiographic element in this volume of
"Poems" is most distinctly summed up in a sonnet
which dropped out of later collections containing
most of the other poems. It bears the title " On
my twenty-fourth Birthday, February 22, 1843,"
and marks well his own sense of a certain transi
tion which had taken place in his growth.

" Now have I quite passed by that cloudy If
That darkened the wild hope of boyish days,

126 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

When first I launched my slender-sided skiff
Upon the wide sea's dim, unsounded ways ;
Now doth Love's sun my soul with splendor fill,
And Hope hath struggled upward into Power,
Soft Wish is hardened into sinewy Will,
And Longing into Certainty doth tower :
The love of beauty knoweth no despair ;
My heart would break, if I should dare to doubt,
That from the Wrong, which makes its dragon's lair
Here on the Earth, fair Truth shall wander out,
Teaching mankind, that Freedom 's held in fee
Only by those who labor to set free."

In " A Year's Life " the 1'envoi of the volume is
a timid poem, " Goe, little booke ! " in which the
poet, sending his venture out among strangers and
most likely among apathetic readers, comforts him
self with the reflection : —

" But, if all others are unkind,
There 's one heart whither thou canst fly
For shelter from the biting wind ;
And, in that home of purity,
It were no bitter thing to die."

The " L'Envoi " of " Poems " is addressed to M.
W. and is an open confession of the indebtedness
of his love, three years after the veiled disclosure
in " lanthe," " Irene," " Isabel," and other figur-
ings of his affection, and runs like a golden
thread through all the warp and woof of his imagi
nation and fancy. In this serious poem, which he
retained in his later collections, though without the
declarative initials,1 Lowell intimates very clearly
that his maturer outlook on life, and his attitude
toward poetry are due largely to the inspiration

1 " L'Envoi," beginning

" Whether my heart hath wiser grown or not."

FIRST VENTURES 127

which he has derived from the aspirations of his
betrothed. Not only has his love for her quick
ened his eye of faith, but he has caught a wider
view and a firmer hold on the great realities of the
spirit through the contagion of her lofty idealism
and its fervent expression in a moral ardor. This
is especially manifest in a long passage which has
been omitted from the poem in later collections.
There are portions of this omitted passage which
are little better than a dissertation on the poet's
mission, and they were wisely dropped, but they
drew after them by necessity a few verses which
have an interest as recording in a candid fashion
the change which had come over the poet's mind in
these three years just past. After the introductory
lines, in which he speaks rather disdainfully of
" A Year's Life," and intimates that he has grown
a sadder and a wiser man, yet with no lessening of
that trust in God which was so marked a character
istic of his betrothed, he goes on : —

" Less of that feeling which the world calls love,
Thou findest in my verse, but haply more
Of a more precious virtue, born of that,
The love of God, of Freedom, and of Man.
Thou knowest well what these three years have been,
How we have filled and graced each other's hearts,
And every day grown fuller of that bliss,
Which, even at first, seemed more than we could bear,
And thou, meantime, unchanged, except it be
That thy large heart is larger, and thine eyes
Of palest blue, more tender with the love
Which taught me first how good it was to love ;
And, if thy blessed name occur less oft,
Yet thou canst see the shadow of thy soul
In all my song, and art well-pleased to feel

128 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

That I could ne'er be rightly true to thee,
If I were recreant to higher aims.
Thou didst not grant to me so rich a fief
As thy full love, on any harder tenure
Than that of rendering thee a single heart ;
And I do service for thy queenly gift
Then best, when I obey my soul, and tread
In reverence the path she beckons me."

It would be joy enough, he proceeds, if he could
so measure joy, to rest in this contentment of lov
ing and being loved, but life had nobler destinies,
and he rejoiced that she who gave him her love had
a larger conception of poetry, and so he passes to
an analysis of the true aims of poesy, which finally
takes the turn of considering the possibility of
satisfying these aims by rendering the landscape of
America into verse, —

" They tell us that our land was made for song," —

and so continues as preserved in the present form
of the poem.

It will be seen thus that this volume of " Poems,"
taken as a register of Lowell's development, marks
a greater sureness of himself, a more definite deter
mination of aim, a confidence in powers whose
precise range he cannot yet measure, and with all
this a swaying now toward the expression of pure
delight in art, now toward the use of his art for the
accomplishment of some great purpose. It is no
ticeable, also, that in " A Year's Life " there is no
trace of humor and scarcely any singular felicity
of phrase ; in " Poems," wit and humor begin to
play a little on the surface. There can be little
doubt that the direct influence of Maria White was

FIRST VENTURES 129

toward what may without offence be called the
practical issue, and this not because she was utili
tarian — on the contrary, Lowell felt called on to
defend her against the charge of being a transcen-
dentalist, the charge implying a reproach as of a
mere visionary ; no, it was a certain high, even ex
alted and enthusiastic allegiance to Truth which
dominated her nature, made her in a degree to ac
cept this allegiance as sign of a mission which she
was to fulfil, rendered her eager to have the close
cooperation of her lover, and made him almost fever
ishly desirous of justifying her faith by his works.
A letter which she wrote to Mr. Briggs, though it
anticipates a little the course of this narrative, may
be cited here as throwing some further light on her
nature.

WATERTOWN, Dec. 12th, 1844.

MY DEAR FRIEND, — James is so hurried with
his book that he has not an instant to spare, and has
therefore commissioned me to answer your letter,
and account to you for his long silence. The truth
is, he delayed writing his articles on Poets and Old
Dramatists, or rather delayed arranging them in
the form of conversations, until he had only two
months left for what really required four. The
book must be out before we are married ; he has
three printers hard upon for copy, for which he has
to rise early and sit up late, so that he can only
spare time to see me twice a week, and then I have
but transient glimpses of his dear face.

The pears were thought delicious, and James
would have told you that we all thought so, had

130 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

not these troubles about his book just been dawning
upon him. The basket still remains upon a shelf
in my closet, and when I look at it a pleasant train
of thoughts comes up in regard to my housekeep
ing, in which I see it filled, with eggs white as snow,
or apples from our little plot, though never again
with pears like those which first consecrated it.

Both James and myself feel greatly interested
in your journal,1 in spite of its proposed name.
James told me to express his horror to you at the
cockneyism of such a title. The Broadway Chron
icle chronicles the thoughts and feelings of Broad
way, not those of the New England people whom
you seem willing to receive somewhat from. Should
not a title have truth for its first recommendation ?
Do you write from the meridian of Broadway ? I
think you write from a sturdy New England heart,
that has a good strong well-spring of old Puritan
blood beating therein, with all its hatred to forms
and cant, to fashion and show. If ' Pistol speaks
naught but truth,' should his name be a lie ? Pis
tol's is not ; it expresses the man truly. I wish
yours did as much to us here, though if it really
gratifies your taste and judgment, if it is not a
whim, but a thought, we shall all like it in time, I
suppose, if we do not now. If it is good we shall
of course come round to it. I always say just what
I think, as you see, and I trust it will not seem
harsh and unlovely to you in me as a woman. I
do not wish to appear so ever, but I had rather

1 The Broadway Journal, which Mr. Briggs was just project
ing.

FIRST VENTURES 131

than give up what I think is truly and undeniably
one of woman's rights in common with man.

James says he cannot say anything now with
certainty in regard to his contributions to your
paper, except that he will give you, of course, the
best he has. Mrs. Putnam, I believe, has nothing
translated at present, but James will ask her, also
William Story and Nathan Hale. I have some
translations I made from the German, songs, bal-

o "

lads, etc., which are at your service if you care to
have them. I hope to write somewhat when I can
have James always by my side to encourage me,
and in time it may be something more than a
source of pleasure to us. Carter has seen your
letter, and I do not doubt will be ready to do all
he can, ready and glad.

I intended to have written to you and Mrs.
Briggs expressly to invite you to our wedding, but
I cannot do it now with much force or grace after
your paragraph on the subject.1 To us who have
been married for nearly five years, it is of course
no spiritual change ; but if it were merely for the
fact that from that day we can always be together,
it would be well worth celebrating by some rite

1 Mr. Brig-gs had •written to Lowell : " I suppose that you are
going1 to impose upon yourselves the heathenish ceremonies of a
wedding, and in the most solemn period of your lives, give your
selves up to the most foolish of all the world's follies. Tut ! you
•will be sick of white satins and raisins for the next century. Is 't
the first of the month that you are to be married ? I would like
to know the day that I may keep you in remembrance. Page
will be here and I will have him down to Bishop's Terrace, and
we will keep it up with becoming solemnity. One of my darling
fowls shall be sacrificed."

132 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

and calling our friends about us to participate in
it. What that rite is does not greatly matter, but
I prefer that which time has consecrated.

" I can scorn nothing which a nation's heart
Hath held for ages holy."

That is, nothing in the form of rite or observance
for things in themselves sacred, for you will tell
me the Ages held the gibbet, the scourge and rack
holy, if I let it pass without qualification. Still,
I bid you to our marriage, though I trust even if
you do not come you can see it whenever you see
us. Some have great need to ask their friends at
such a time, that they may afterwards certify such
a thing has taken place because no trace of it re
mains. It can never be so with us, it could never
be so with any who hold love sacred. . . .

We shall be married the night after Christmas,
and go on to New York after one day and night
spent at home. We should love to stop there to
see you as long as you would like to have us, but
our present engagements in Philadelphia will take
us directly on there. We shall be in New York
on Sunday, where, is not decided yet. With love
to your wife, yours with friendly heart,

MARIA WHITE.

The book which this letter speaks of as absorb
ing Lowell's time and thought was his " Conversa
tions on Some of the Old Poets," for which Miss
White made a cover design and which was pub
lished by John Owen early in January, 1845. It
will be remembered that Lowell began in the

FIRST VENTURES 133

Boston Miscellany and continued in the Pioneer
some studies on the Old Dramatists. The series
might have gone on at greater length, for he was
working a vein which yielded him great delight,
and never indeed ceased to engage his attention.
He resumed the theme in the last considerable
venture of his life, and gave a course of lectures
at the Lowell Institute in the spring of 1887, which
was in effect a series of readings from the drama
tists with running comments. " When I selected
my topic for this new venture," he said to his audi
ence at the opening of the course, " I was return
ing to a first love. The second volume I ever
printed, in 1843 I think it was,1 — it is now a rare
book, I am not sorry to know ; I have not seen it
for many years, — was mainly about the Old Eng
lish Dramatists, if I am not mistaken. I dare say
it was crude enough, but it was spontaneous and
honest."

The suspension of the Pioneer left Lowell with
out any convenient vehicle for carrying further
these appreciative papers, and he projected a book
partly because the subject was in his mind, partly
because he was anxious to turn his printed matter
to fresh account, but chiefly, it must be inferred
from the contents of the book, because he was
eager to have freedom of speech on several mat
ters which lay close to his mind. He resolved,
therefore, to remodel his papers, so far as he used

1 The exact succession of his hooks was A Year's Life, 18-11 ;
Poems, 1843 (dated 1844) ; Conversations on Some of the Old Po
ets, 1845.

134 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

them at all, into a series of conversations. His
work upon the book was hurried, as the letter last
quoted from Miss White intimates. In Septem
ber, 1844, he was planning a course of four or five
lectures on English poetry, beginning with Chau
cer, which he proposed delivering in Philadelphia
in the winter immediately after his marriage ; but
he seems suddenly to have changed his mind, and
to have tossed what he might have prepared into
this new book, which opens with a long conversa
tion on Chaucer, — a conversation split in the next
edition into two. The passages from Chaucer
which he quotes are drawn sometimes from the
modernization by Wordsworth, but are also, in
some cases, his own much closer simplification of
the original. To the ear they depart very little
from the original, the widest departure being in
getting rid of the final e. The talk on Chaucer is
followed by comments on Chapman and Ford, with
reference by easy suggestion to Shakespeare, Mar
lowe, Fletcher, Pope, and Wordsworth.

But though the staple of the " Conversations " is
poetry, and there are generous examples and much
keen appreciation of the poets discussed, the book
would interest a reader to-day less by its treatment
of the subjects which gave it excuse for being than
by its free and careless exhibition of Lowell's mind
on topics of current concern. There is very little
of dramatic assumption in the interlocutors. Philip
and John are simply convenient personages play
ing at a battledore and shuttlecock game of words.
Philip is the major character, who does all of the

FIRST VENTURES 135

reading and advances most of the propositions, but
John, whose chief part is to start Philip by ques
tions, and to interpose occasional jibes or independ
ent observations, is not differentiated in manner ;
he is another of Lowell's many selves, and may be
taken as the critical, interrupting side of his mind.1
But both speakers are after the same game.

One of the agreeable touches in the volume is in
the asides with which Lowell refers to contempo
rary authors like Hawthorne and Longfellow, to
Page, to D wight, and to such beginners as W. W.
Story and R. C., and when he takes up for discus
sion a recent address by the Rev. Mr. Putnam.
These references and allusions help one to under
stand the attitude which Lowell took toward his
book. He did not deceive himself as to its impor
tance. It was a prolongation of his magazine work
and gave him an opportunity to free his mind.
The form, as I have intimated, was not that of a
true conversation ; it is far removed from such
excellent exemplars as the " Imaginary Conversa
tions " of Landor, the first of which had appeared
a score of years before ; it had but little of the
graceful fencing which brings the talkers closer and
closer to the heart of a subject, till one makes the
final thrust that disarms his antagonist. No ; it
was simply a device to secure flexibility and dis-

1 Mr. Evert A. Duyckinck, in March, 1840, replying to a sug
gestion by Lowell of " specimens of old translators " for Wiley &
Putnam's Library, doubts the practicability, but adds, " You will.
I hope, not lose sight of so good a topic which might provoke :i
new conversation between yourself and your Mrs. Harris (Philip
and John) very profitably."

136 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

cursiveness, and is talk run mad, sometimes an
harangue, sometimes an epigram, most often a
rapid flow of views on literature and life. " If
some of the topics introduced seem foreign to the
subject," says Lowell, in his prefatory address To
the Reader, " I can only say that they are not so to
my mind, and that an author's object in writing
criticisms is not only to bring to light the beauties
of the works he is considering, but also to express
his own opinions upon those and other matters."

The reading which lies behind the talk is varied,
and the talker speaks from a full mind, but there is
none of that restraint of art which gives weight to
the words and makes one wish to read again and
again the reflections. The cleverness is of the

D

showy sort, and an interesting comparison could be
drawn between the portions of the book which re
late directly to the dramatists and the more mellow
discussion of the same subject in the latest of Low
ell's published prose. But despite the crudeness
which marks the earlier book, it shares with the
later that delightful spontaneity and first hand
intelligence which make Lowell always worth at
tention when he speaks on literary art. It was
characteristic of him that when at sixty-eight he
discoursed on the dramatists whom he had been
reading all his life, he had not the need and appar
ently not the curiosity to turn back and see what
he said about them at twenty-five. There was little,
if any, of the careful husbandry of his ideas which
marks some men of letters ; out of the abundance
of the heart his mouth spoke.

FIRST VENTURES 137

In no one of his books can the reader discern
better the spontaneous element in Lowell's mind,
and the length to which he could go under the im
pulse of the immediate thought. So fluent was he,
so unaware of any effort, and so swept away for
the time being by the stream of his ideas, that he
seemed to himself as one possessed, and more than
once he hinted darkly that he was not writing the
book, but was the spokesman for sages and poets
who used him as their means of communication.
The visionary faculty which he possessed could
easily be confused at this time with the half-rapt
condition of the mind fed with emotional ardor.
The book, as we have seen, was written at full
speed, and it reflects the generous nature of the
writer; but it reflects also the imtempered thought,
and registers judgments in the process of making.

Running through the entire book, and making
the real excuse for it, is Lowell's study of the es
sence of poetry. This is what gives to the volume
its chief interest ; it is really a half -conscious expli
cation of the concern which was most agitating his
mind at this time. What was poetry? Could
it be the substance of a man's life ? There is a
prosecution of some of the same problems which
recently he had been trying to solve in his own vol
ume of poems. He had to ask himself if he was a
poet. The witness for that was to be found not so
much in his taste and his preferences in literature,
nor solely in the delight which he took in versifi
cation ; he felt the stirring in his nature of that
hio-h vocation of the poet which makes him a seer

138 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

and an interpreter. His impulse was to yield to
it, but the question arose, What was he to inter
pret ? What was there in life about him which
was crying out for articulation ? And here, if I
mistake not, he fell into some confusion of mind
through the insistence of one particular incarna
tion of divine thought. He was conscious and
aware of a momentous idea, that of freedom ex
pressed in terms of human brotherhood, words
which even then had the dull ring of cant when
they were used by counterfeit-minded men, yet had
in the minds of genuine men and women a vibrant
and exultant sound as if they were to pay all the
debts of poor human nature. Remembering that
this was on the eve of '48, when the visionaries of
Europe and America were very sure that they saw
a great light, one sees how forcible this idea could
be as a motive in the throbbing and ingenuous
heart of a young American who was quite sure he
was called to high endeavor.

But with the shrewdness which belonged to his
mother wit, Lowell could not satisfy himself with
merely windy utterances. He needed emphatically
to kindle something with his divine flame. As
he says of Lessing: "His genius was not a St.
Elmo's fire, as it so often is with mere poets, — as
it was in Shelley, for example, playing in ineffec
tual flame about the points of his thoughts, — but
was interfused with his whole nature and made a
part of his very being." Now he found himself
confronting a monstrous denial of this truth of
freedom issuing in human brotherhood when he

FIRST VENTURES 139

contemplated slavery in America, and his natural
indignation was heightened by the ardor of the
woman he loved. Was he not, after all, to be a
reformer beyond everything else ? and where was
the point of contact between the poet and the re
former ? His mind circled about this problem ; his
convictions called upon him with a loud voice to
make good his professions ; his instinctive sense of
cougruity, which is hardly more than an alternate
form of the sense of humor, forbade him to make
poetry the maid of all work for the anti-slavery
cause, and he sought diligently to resolve this par
ticular form of spiritual activity into the elemental
properties of freedom, and so to find therein a true
medium for the sustenance of poetry. Moreover,
though he described himself not long after, in " A
Fable for Critics," as —

" striving- Parnassus to climb
With a whole bale of isms tied together with rhyme," —

it must be said with emphasis that he held these
isms too lightly for them to become the determin
ing factor in his intellectual and spiritual growth.
They did hamper him, as he says a little ruefully
in the next line, and while it is idle business to
speculate on what a man might have become in the
absence of the very conditions that made him what
he was, one is tempted to wonder if with his en
dowments Lowell might not, under less strenuous
conditions, have been exclusively a poet. What is
one man's meat is another man's poison, says the
homely adage, and it is a curious fact that but for
the same flame of anti-slavery passion Whittier

140 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

might never have been more than a verbose Quiet-
ist versifier.

In his dedication of the volume to his father,
Lowell speaks of it as " containing many opinions
from which he will wholly, yet with the large char
ity of a Christian heart, dissent," and the most fla
grant of these is probably in a passage in which he
speaks with vehemence of the church and religion.
As falls to the hearer of many impulsive utter
ances of young men, one is apt to see in them
rather the impatience of a generous heart (" why
so hot, my little man ? ") than the deliberate con
victions into which one has been forced reluctantly,
but the passage is so characteristic of Lowell at
this period and so expressive of the turbulence of
his mind that it may well be read here. John has
been commenting on the innate piety of Chaucer
as illustrated by his glowing words on the daisy,
and Philip takes up the parable.

" PHILIP.

" Piety is indifferent whether she enters at the
eye or the ear. There is none of the senses at
which she does not knock one day or other. The
Puritans forgot this and thrust beauty o\\t of the
meeting-house, and slammed the door in her face.
I love such sensuality as that which Chaucer shows
in his love of nature. Surely, God did not give us
these fine senses as so many posterns to the heart
for the Devil to enter at. I believe that he has
endowed us with no faculty but for his own glory.
If the Devil has got false keys to them, we must

FIRST VENTURES HI

first have given him a model of the wards to make
a mould by. The senses can do nothing unless the
soul be an accomplice, and, in whatever the soul
does, the, body will have a voice. . . .

JOHN.

" All things that make us happy incline us also
to be grateful, and I would rather enlarge than
lessen the number of these. Morose and callous
recluses have persuaded men that religion is a
prude, and have forced her to lengthen her face,
and contract her brows to suit the character. They
have laid out a gloomy turnpike to heaven, upon
which they and their heirs and assigns are privi
leged to levy tolls, and have set up guide-boards to
make us believe that all other roads lead in quite
an opposite direction. The pleasanter they are,
the more dangerous. For my part, I am satisfied
that I am upon the right path so long as I can see
anything to make me happier, anything to make me
love man, and therefore God, the more. I would
stamp God's name, and not Satan's, upon every
innocent pleasure, upon every legitimate gratifica
tion of sense, and God would be the better served
for it. In what has Satan deserved so well of us,
that we should set aside such first-fruits for him ?
Christianity differs not more widely from Plato
than from the Puritans.

" PHILIP.

" The church needs reforming now as much as in
Luther's time, and sells her indulgences as readily.

142 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

There are altars to which the slaveholder is ad
mitted, while ' the Unitarian would be put forth as
unclean. If it be God's altar, both have a right
there, — the sinner most of all, — but let him not
go unrebuked. We hire our religion by the quar
ter,, and if it tells any disagreeable truths, we dis
miss it, for we did not pay it for such service as
this. Christ scourged the sellers of doves out of
the temple ; we invite the sellers of men and women
in. We have few such preachers now as Nathan
was. They preach against sin in the abstract,
shooting their arrows into the woundless air. Let
sin wrap itself in superfine broadcloth, and put its
name on charitable subscription papers, and it is
safe. We bandy compliments with it, instead of
saying sternly ' Get thee behind me ! ' The Devil
might listen to some preaching I have heard with
out getting his appetite spoiled. There is a great
deal of time and money expended to make men
believe that this one or that one will be damned,
and to scare or wheedle them into good Calvinists
or Episcopalians ; but very little pains is taken to
make them good Christians. . . .

" JOHN.

" It has never been a safe thing to breathe a
whisper against the church, least of all in this
country, where it has no prop from the state, but
is founded only on the love, or, if you will have
it so, the prejudices of the people. Religion has
come to be esteemed synonymous with the church ;
there are few minds clear enough to separate it

FIRST VENTURES 143

from the building erected for its convenience and
shelter. It is this which has made our Christianity
external, a task-ceremony to be gone through with,
and not a principle of life itself. The church has
been looked on too much in the light of a machine,
which only needs a little oil, now and then, on its
joints and axles, to make it run glibly and perform
all its functions without grating or creaking. No
thing that we can say will be of much service. The
reformers must come from her own bosom ; and
there are many devout souls among her own priests
now, who would lay down their lives to purify her.
The names of infidel and heretic are the San beni-
tos in which we dress offenders in the nineteenth
century, and a bigoted public opinion furnishes the
fagots and applies the match ! The very cross it
self, to which the sacred right of private judgment
fled for sanctuary, has been turned into a whip
ping-post. Doubtless, there are no nations on the
earth so wicked as those which profess Christian
ity ; and the blame may be laid in great measure
at the door of the church, which has always sought
temporal power, and has chosen rather to lean upon
the arm of flesh than upon that of God. The
church has corrupted Christianity. She has decked
her person and embroidered her garments with the
spoils of pagan altars, and has built her temples of
blocks which paganism has squared ready to her
hand. We are still Huns and Vandals, and Sax
ons and Celts, at heart. We have carved a cross
upon our altars, but the smoke of our sacrifice goes
up to Thor and Odin still. Lately I read in the

144 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

newspapers a toast given at a military festival, by
one of those who claim to be the earthly repre
sentatives of the Prince of Peace. England and
France send out the cannon and the bayonet, upon
missionary enterprises, to India and Africa, and
our modern Eliots and Brainerds among the red
men are of the same persuasive metal.

" PHILIP.

" Well, well, let us hope for change. There are
signs of it ; there has been a growling of thunder
round the horizon for many days. We are like
the people in countries subject to earthquakes, who
crowd into the churches for safety, but find that
their sacred walls are as fragile as other works of
human hands. Nay, the very massiveness of their
architecture makes their destruction more sudden
and their fall more dangerous. You and I have
become convinced of this. Both of us, having cer
tain reforms at heart, and believing them to be of
vital interest to mankind, turned first to the church
as the nearest helper under God. We have been
disappointed. Let us not waste our time in throw
ing stones at its insensible doors. As you have
said, the reformers must come from within. The
prejudice of position is so strong that all her ser
vants will unite against an exoteric assailant, melt
ing up, if need be, the holy vessels for bullets, and
using the leaves of the holy book itself for wadding.
But I will never enter a church from which a
prayer goes up for the prosperous only, or for the
unfortunate among the oppressors, and not for the

FIRST VENTURES 145

oppressed and fallen ; as if God had ordained our
, pride of caste and our distinctions of color, and as
if Christ had forgotten those that are in bonds.
We are bid to imitate God ; let us in this also fol
low his example, whose only revenge upon error is
the giving success to truth, and but strive more
cheerfully for the triumph of what we believe to be
right. Let us, above all things, imitate him in
ascribing what we see of wrong-doing to blindness
and error, rather than to wilful sin. The Devil
loves nothing better than the intolerance of reform
ers, and dreads nothing so much as their charity
and patience. The scourge is better upon our backs
than in our hands.

' JOHN.

" When the air grows thick and heavy, and the
clouds gather in the moral atmosphere, the tall
steeples of the church are apt to attract the light
ning first. Its pride and love of high places are
the most fatal of conductors. That small upper
room, in which the disciples were first gathered,
would always be safe enough."

These kindling words are those of a reformer
dealing with existing conditions. It would be much
more to the point if we could have in definite terms
that revelation of the inner verity of religion which
visited Lowell a little earlier than this, as may be
seen by a passage from a letter to Dr. Loring, 20
September, 1842. " I had a revelation last Friday
evening. I was at Mary's, and happening to say

146 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

something of the presence of spirits (of whom, I
said, I was often dimly aware), Mr. Putnam en
tered into an argument with me on spiritual mat
ters. As I was speaking the whole system rose up
before me like a vague Destiny looming from the
abyss. I never before so clearly felt the spirit of
God in rne and around me. The whole room
seemed to me full of God. The air seemed to wave
to and fro with the presence of Something, I knew
not what. I spoke with the calmness and clearness
of a prophet." l

No doubt this ecstasy may be regarded as one
manifestation of that psychical temper which caused
him to see visions in his childhood, but it allied
itself with intellectual processes, for he goes on to
say : " I cannot tell you what this revelation was.
I have not yet studied it enough. But I shall
perfect it one day, and then you shall hear it and
acknowledge its grandeur. It embraces all other
systems."

We may not find a clear statement of this mystic
revelation in the discursive " Conversations ; "
rather we should look for it in his poems of this
period, and here, though we find nothing whatever
to correspond to a system of divine order, we do
find, recurring in various forms, a recognition of an
all-embracing, all-penetrating power which through
the poet transmutes nature into something finer and
more eternal, and gives him a vantage ground
from which to perceive more truly the realities of
life. " The Token," " An Incident in a Railroad

1 Letters, i. 69.

FIRST VENTURES 147

Car," « The Shepherd of King Admetus," all in a
manner witness to this, and show how persistently
in Lowell's mind was present this aspect of the
poet which makes him a seer. Perhaps there is a
more direct attempt at expressing this truth in one
of the poems not retained in later collections. It
is entitled " A Dirge," and is the imagined plaint
over a poet who has died. In this tumultuous pe
riod of Lowell's youth, when the tranquillity which
a returned love brought was after all a very self-
conscious tranquillity, there was always room for
morbid fancies, and the frequency with which in
his poetry he recurs to the images of death leads
one to suspect that he experimented a little with the
idea of his own death. And it may be that in this
poem, which a healthier judgment later led him to
suppress, he was dramatizing himself.

" Poet ! lonely is thy bed,
And the turf is overhead, —

Cold earth is thy cover ;
But thy heart hath found release,
And it slumbers full of peace
'Neath the rustle of green trees,
And the warm hum of the bees

Mid the drowsy clover ;
Through thy chamber still as death
A smooth gurgle wandereth,
As the blue stream murmureth

To the blue sky over.

Thou wast full of love and truth,

Of forgivingness and ruth, —

Thy great heart with hope and youth

Tided to o'erflowing ;
Thou didst dwell in mysteries,
And then! lingered on thine eyes

148 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

Shadows of serener skies,
Awfully wild memories

That were like foreknowing ;
Thou didst remember well and long
Some fragments of thine angel-song,
And strive, through want, and woe, and wrong,

To win the world unto it ;
Thy curse it was to see and hear
Beyond to-day's scant hemisphere,
Beyond all mists of doubt and fear,
Into a life more true and clear, —

And dearly thou didst rue it.

" Poet ! underneath the turf,

Soft thou sleepest, free from morrow ;
Thou hast struggled through the surf

Of wild thoughts, and want, and sorrow ;
Now, beneath the moaning pine

Full of rest thy body lieth,
While, far up in pure sunshine,
Underneath a sky divine,

Her loosed wings thy spirit trieth ;
Oft she strove to spread them here,
But they were too white and clear
For our dingy atmosphere."

The limitations of his theme and measure forbid
more than a hint at this vocation of the poet, but
it happens that we have a somewhat more explicit
statement of the same general idea in a prose
form. A very few weeks after the revelation re
ferred to in the letter to Dr. Loring, too soon cer
tainly for it to have faded from his mind, he sat
down to write a paper on " The Plays of Thomas
Middleton," and the introductory passages contain
what may fairly be taken as snatches from that
music of the spheres which he seems suddenly to
have overheard.

FIRST VENTURES 149

" Poets are the forerunners and prophets of
changes in the moral world. Driven, by their finer
nature, to search into and reverently contemplate
the universal laws of soul, they find some frag
ments of the broken tables of God's law, and in
terpret it, half conscious of its mighty import.
While philosophers are wrangling, and politicians
playing at snapdragon with the destinies of mil
lions, the poet, in the silent deeps of his soul, listens
to those mysterious pulses which, from one central
heart, send life and beauty through the finest veins
of the universe, and utters truths to be sneered at,
perchance, by contemporaries, but which become
religion to posterity. . . .

" The dreams of poets are morning-dreams, com
ing to them in the early dawn and day-breaking of
great truths, and are surely fulfilled at last. They
repeat them, as children do, and all Christendom,
if it be not too busy with quarrelling about the
meaning of creeds which have no meaning at all,
listens with a shrug of the shoulders and a smile of
pitying incredulity : for reformers are always mad
men in their own age, and infallible saints in the
next."

In such rhetorical terms did Lowell, all aflame
himself with poetic zeal, try to outline the divine
call of the poet, and the " Conversations " reen-
force a doctrine which was held more firmly since
the preacher was eager to display it in his own
practice. At this time, certainly, Lowell's concep
tion of the function of the poet was blended with
his apprehension of the divine order, and he entered

150 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

upon the discharge of poetic duties with the seri
ousness which a young priest might have carried
to the sacred office. The very suppression of his
native humor, so that it makes only a few furtive
leaps in his poetry up to this time, — for we are set
ting aside his boyish pranks in verse, — illustrates
the exalted mood in which he was living.

The " Conversations on Some of the Old Poets "
was published, as we have seen, in January, 1845,1
but as soon as his own part of the book was done,
he was free for a more vital venture : on the 26th
of December, 1844, after a five years' betrothal,
he was married in her father's house at Watertown
to Maria White.

1 See Appendix B.

CHAPTER IV

IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS
1845-1849

IN the spring of 1844 Mrs. White had taken her
daughter Maria to Philadelphia to spare her the
rigors of the North, and they had found lodgings
at 127 Arch Street, with Friend Parker, a kindly
Quakeress, who had made them acquainted with
Mr. and Mrs. E. M. Davis, influential members
of the Society of Friends. An intimacy grew up
between them, for they had a strong bond of sym
pathy in their common zeal for the cause of anti-
slavery and other reforms, and a few weeks after
the return of the Whites to Watertown, Maria
wrote to her new friends : " I have talked so much
to James of Philadelphia, that I have inspired him
with a desire to try its virtues if he has an oppor
tunity. We shall probably be married in the spring
and I wish very much to spend it there, instead of
in our bleak New England, and we should do so if
we heard of any opening or employment for him
during so short a period as three months. I sup
pose the season for lectures would be over then, and
I fear that Destiny has not been so kind as to ar
range any exact labors for him then, simply because
he wishes to go. But should you hear of any situa-

152 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

tion for a literary man at that time, however small
the recompense, might I not depend on your kind
ness to let us know of it ? "

For some reason the marriage took place as we
have seen at the close of 1844, and not in the
spring of 1845. Mr. and Mrs. Lowell stayed a
day or two in New York at the New York Hotel,
whose splendor amazed them, and reached Phila
delphia on the first day of the new year. By a
happy augury, the weather had been delightful on
their journey, and they had almost a breath of
summer in midwinter. They went at once to Friend
Parker's, and settled down to happy work. The
scheme of lecturing had come to nothing, but Mr.
Davis had arranged that Lowell should do some
editorial work on the Pennsylvania Freeman.
That paper had taken the place of the National
Enquirer, when Benjamin Lundy relinquished its
management. Whittier went to Philadelphia in
the spring of 1838 to edit the Freeman, and re
mained there two years, when his frail health com
pelled him to retire. The paper had been tempo
rarily suspended in the interest of the National
Anti-Slavery Standard, but had been revived and
was now under the editorial control of C. C. Bur-
leigh and J. Miller McKim.

The situation of the young pair is sketched in the
following letter to Robert Carter : —

127 ARCH STREET, PHILADELPHIA,
Jan'y 14, 1845.

MY DEAR BOY, — Here we are situated as plea
santly as can be, and I write to inform you of the

IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 153

fact a great deal sooner than you expected, having
been in Philadelphia just a fortnight to-morrow. I
shall not attempt to give you any statistical infor
mation with regard to anything here, for I know
that if I should try to describe the Hall of Inde
pendence, or anything else, you would contradict
me stoutly till I convicted you out of some Geo
graphy or other, and then you would manage to
change sides and appear to be confuting me. You
see that your obstinacy about Boston Common has
cheated you out of a minute detail of all the curi
osities of this city, together with an account of the
riots, taken from the mouth of one of the leaders
of the mob who was shot dead at the first fire of
the military. But this is a melancholy subject.

Why did you not (you rascal!) slip even so
much as a little note into the package you sent
through the Anti-Slavery office ? Speaking of let
ters, I mailed one at Worcester from Maria to
Sarah Page, directed to your care, and the Post
Office being closed, I ventured to mail it without
paying the postage, trusting that the kind provi
dence which has hitherto taken care of you above
your deserts may have enabled you to redeem it
from the claws of the Brookline postmaster.

Owen writes me that the "Conversations" is
selling well, and Peterson l says that the notices are
all of the most favorable kind. I have seen Graham
and shall probably be able to make a good arrange
ment for him after my new book has been puffed a
little more. He has grown fat, an evidence of suc-
i Editor of Graham's Magazine.

154 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

cess. He lives in one of the finest houses in Arch
Street, and keeps his carriage. He says he would
have given me $150.00 for the " Legend of Brit
tany " for his Magazine without the copyright. I
am sorry I did not think of this at the time.

I shall get along very easily while I am here. I
am engaged to write leaders for the Pennsylva
nia Freeman (which comes out once a fortnight)
and am to be paid $5.00 for each. I was unwill
ing to take anything, but they say I must and I
suppose I ought. I wrote one for the next Thurs
day's paper entitled " Our Position ; " it is not
very good, but I shall do better as I get used to it.

I have not seen the first number of the Broad
way Journal yet, but the second is quite entertain
ing and well done. The type is a little too large.
Are you going to write a notice of my book for the
paper ? Briggs has written to me since I got here,
but says nothing about it. I unfortunately missed
seeing him in New York.

We have a little room in the third story (back)
with white muslin curtains trimmed with evergreen,
and are as happy as two mortals can be. I think
Maria is better, and I know I am — in health I
mean, in spirit we both are. She is gaining flesh
and so am I, and my cheeks are grown so prepos
terously red that I look as if I had rubbed them
against all the red brick walls in the city.

I have seen your friend since I came here.

Somebody called on us the very evening after we
arrived, and on going downstairs who should it be
but our interesting friend. He attacked me upon

IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 155

the subject of a vegetable diet, and I replied by
fun, which rather disconcerted him. He has not
been here since.

I have felt a little of the swell of fashionable
society since I have been here. Dr. Elwyn, a kins
man of mine, hearing that I was in town, called
upon me and has been very attentive ever since.
He is an agreeable man and somewhat literary for
Philadelphia. His mother, who has lately quitted
Episcopacy for Presbyterianism, called on us to
day, and told me that her " pastor," the Rev. Dr.
Bethune, was coming to see me. Authorship might
have taken the place of misery in Shakespeare's
aphorism.

The abolitionists here are very pleasant and
kind. . . . Maria sends her best love. I mean
Mrs. Lowell sends it. Give my kind remembrances
to Austin and to Owen. The package of the latter
came safe.

God bless you ! Most lovingly yours,

J. R. L.

Mrs. Lowell sings her second in this duet in a
letter to Mrs. Hawthorne, written two days later, in
which she says: "We are most delightfully sit
uated here in every respect, surrounded with kind
and sympathizing friends, yet allowed by them to
be as quiet and retired as we choose ; but it is al
ways a pleasure to know you can have society if you
wish for it, by walking a few steps beyond your
own door. We live in a little chamber on the
third story, quite low enough to be an attic, so that

156 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

we feel classical in our environment : and we have
one of the sweetest and most motherly of Quaker
women to anticipate all our wants, and make us
comfortable outwardly as we are blest inwardly.
James's prospects are as good as an author's ought
to be, and I begin to fear we shall not have the
satisfaction of being so very poor after all. But we
are, in spite of this disappointment of our expecta
tions, the happiest of mortals or spirits, and cling to
the skirts of every passing hour, though we know
the next will bring us still more joy." l

The young couple had no resources save their
faculty for writing. Mrs. Lowell brought no
dowry, but she had poetic sensibility, and fell to
translating into verse from German poetry, espe
cially from Uhland. Lowell, with increased con
fidence bred of the facility with which he had
dashed off the " Conversations," and with an un
failing spring of poetry, was ready for any sort of
venture. His faithful friend, Mr. Briggs, who had
just launched the first number of his new literary
weekly, The Broadway Journal, was eager for
contributions from both. " I am very proud," he
wrote on receiving Mrs. Lowell's translation, " The
Wreath," from the German of Uhland, " to be the
first to introduce her new name to the public," and
he proposed all manner of topics for Lowell to
write on, such as a paper on Hawthorne and one
on Emerson, for a series of articles on " Our
American Prose Writers," which had been ini
tiated with one on the now forgotten W. A. Jones.
1 Nathaniel Hawthorne and his Wife, i. 283.

IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 157

Lowell himself complained of a native indolence,
and Briggs, \vlio was skeptical of the force of this
objection, proposed a very natural corrective : —

" There is no such stimulus to execution," he
writes, " as a sure reward. Now I would like to
make a contract with you to furnish me with a col
umn or two, or more, of prose matter, to suit your
self, in the shape of criticism, gossip, or anything
else, once a week for six months or a year. You
have no idea how easy a thing of this kind becomes
when you know that you must do it. If you get
nothing else by such an undertaking than the busi
ness habit, it would be worth your while. What
will you do it for ? If our means were sufficient,
or success were secure, I would make you an offer
that would be sufficiently tempting, but I am loath
to make you one that may seem too small. Consider
now, and let me know."

Lowell's affection for Briggs and his sympathy
with him in his risky venture of a weekly literary
journal made him at first well-disposed to contrib
ute freely in response to the editor's urgent invi
tation, and he was most generous in his attitude
respecting payment. " You have been in business,
my dear friend," he writes to Briggs, " and know
exactly how much you ought to give me with a
proper regard to your own balance sheet at the end
of the year. I know that your inclination will be
to give me more than that. But more you ought
not to give nor I to take. I leave it for you to
decide. I should not like to bind myself to write
every week, though I have no doubt that I shall

158 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

be able to, and I have some fears that a contingent
want of money may hereafter prove as sharp a spur
to me as a contract."

Mr. Briggs in reply was more explicit as to
terms : " In regard to the compensation, it would
be well to read Emerson's essay on that subject.
According to him, compensation is inevitable,
therefore one need never give himself any trouble
on the subject. Nature settles the whole business.
You will be sure to receive due compensation for
whatever you may do for the B. J. Poe writes
for me at the rate of one dollar a column. If you
will do so, I shall esteem it a capital bargain. The
poetry I will pay for separately on a different prin
ciple." Accordingly, a day or two after, Lowell
wrote : " I send you the first of a series of four or
five letters which you may print if you like it. If
you do not like it, reject it without scruple. It
may be a little too abolition for you as yet. I do
not think it good at all, but Maria thinks better
of it than I do (bating one or two coarse expres
sions in it). I do not consider it mine. I wrote
it only in the hope of doing some good. So you
may alter it as much as you please, if it will serve
your turn. If, on the other hand, you like it, I
think I may promise that the next will be better.
I am in a great hurry, I have only time to say
that I like your terms and am perfectly content to
help you as much as I can. ... I always expect
to be taken at my word, so reject this without
scruple."

The letter thus sent purported to be by one

IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 159

Matthew Trueman, a country cousin to a supposed
Member of Congress, scalping him for his vote on
the question of the annexation of Texas. It was
intended to be the first of a series in which the
whole question of annexation was to be argued. It
was addressed to no one in particular, but only to
some hypothetical scoundrel. It will be remem
bered that annexation was the all-absorbing topic
of political discussion during the winter of 1844-
1845. Lowell could not do otherwise from his
anti-slavery principles than bitterly condemn the
action of Congress, and this letter was an out
burst of satire and invective ; but it did not see
the light, and it was not followed by others in the
same vein.

The editor of The Broadway Journal began
fencing with the author. He wondered to whom
it was addressed. He thought perhaps it would
be best not to print the whole. " Your satire," he
wrote, " bruises instead of cutting the flesh, and
makes a confounded sore place without letting out
any of the patient's bad blood. I will make as
full a selection as I can ; but there are certain
expressions that could not be safely used in public."
He regrets that his friend should have lost so much
time over the letter, but thinks it must have done
him good by drawing off his superfluous zeal. " I
shall think better of you myself for knowing that
you can feel so strongly and write so harshly," he
adds : " it justifies the opinion that I expressed
of you in my notice of your ' Conversations ; ' " and
after a further discussion of abolitionism in prin-

160 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

ciple and practice, he begs him to write something
about Philadelphia, or art, the academy, the abom
inable white doors, the poor watery oysters, every
thing and anything. " Put all your abolitionism
into rhyme," he concludes : " everybody will read
it in that shape, and it will do good. Don't forget
that you are a poet and go to writing newspaper
articles."

The letter was shrewd, kind, reasonable to an
uninterested reader, but must have been exacer
bating to Lowell. Mr. Briggs could not conceal
the final ground of his refusal, that to publish this
and similar letters would be to jeopard the fortunes
of The Broadicay Journal, and in the sensitive
condition of the mind of the out and out aboli
tionist, this was arrant cowardice. A good deal of
correspondence followed, and Lowell lost his inter
est in the Journal, though he retained his strong
affection for his friend and sent him, as well as a
few poems, a slashing criticism of the exhibition in
the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and a
review of Halleck's " Aliiwick Castle, with other
Poems," but The Broadway Journal itself died out
of existence shortly, Mr. Briggs parting company
with it at the end of a half year.1 In sending the
former of the two prose articles mentioned above,
Lowell wrote : —

1 The circumstances pertaining to the close of Mr. Briggs's
connection with The Broadway Journal are detailed with some
particularity in letters from Mr. Briggs to Lowell, printed in
Mr. G. E. Woodberry's Edgar Allan Poe in the American Men of
Letters series. See pp. 234-239.

IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 161

PHILADELPHIA, Feb'y 15.

MY DEAR FRIEND, — I send you something
which will help you fill up, and will show my ivill-
ingness to help till I can send something better.
I am so continually interrupted here, and have been
so long used to having all my time to myself, that I
have not been able yet to acquire the habit of using
anything but the very titbits of my time. I have
begun several articles for you, but failed in satis
fying myself, but before long hope to send you
something to your taste. I will send a poem at
any rate. Halleck, I see, is about to publish a new
edition, which I should like to write a notice of if
you have made no other arrangement.

This notice of the " Academy " I have written,
you see, as editorial, and you can modify it as you
please.

It is hard to write when one is first married.
The Jews gave a man a year's vacation. I hope
to serve you sooner, and meanwhile remain
Your loving friend,

J. R. L.

P. S. Maria and I both like the Journal ex
ceedingly.

The other vehicle for Lowell's more exclusively
literary work during the winter of 1845 was Gra
hams Magazine, published in Philadelphia. I Te
had been a contributor since the spring of 1841,
when he used the signature " II. Perceval," which
he had been employing in initial form in the South-

162 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

em Literary Messenger. His contributions were
all poems, some of which he had preserved in the
two volumes already published, but in the number
for February, 1845, there appeared his biographi
cal and critical sketch of Poe in the series " Our
Contributors," which ran for a score of numbers
and was accompanied by steel portraits. Graham
was desirous of including Lowell in the series with
a portrait by Page, but for some reason the plan
fell through. In this sketch of Poe, Lowell used
a discursive manner, giving expression in a lively
fashion to his judgments of other poets in the past,
but not hesitating to speak emphatically of the
genius of Poe, whom he did not know personally.

" Mr. Poe," he wrote, " is at once the most dis
criminating, philosophical, and fearless critic upon
imaginative works who has written in America.
It may be that we should qualify our remarks a
little, and say that he might be, rather than that
he always is, for he seems sometimes to mistake
his phial of prussic acid for his inkstand. . . . Mr.
Poe has that indescribable something which men
have agreed to call genius."

Lowell had offered to write this sketch in May,
1844, and had been supplied with biographical
material by Poe himself, who moreover read the
article in manuscript which Lowell sent at the end
of September through their common friend, Mr.
Briggs. During this winter of 1845 Poe was a
lively subject of discussion by Lowell and his
friends, for he was the most conspicuous figure in
American literature at that time. His " Raven "

IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 163

appeared in The American Review for February,
and his series of papers on plagiarism, with their
acuteness, their ostentation of learning, and their
malice, was trailing through the Mirror and The
Broadway Journal. His name was linked with
that of Briggs in the editorship of the Journal,
and Briggs sometimes found it difficult to make
clear to his friends just how responsibility was ap
portioned between them. It was impossible to
regard this very insistent figure as an intellectual
or aesthetic abstraction, and his personality was
always getting in the way of a fair judgment. In
a letter to Briggs, 16 January, 1845, Lowell re
marks : " From a paragraph I saw yesterday in
the Tribune I find that Poe has been at me in the
Mirror. He has at least that chief element of a
critic — a disregard of persons. He will be a very
valuable coadjutor to you." Briggs, who was at
this time a warm defender of Poe, had read the
article in the Mirror, which was a review of the
" Conversations," and assured Lowell that it was
extremely laudatory and discriminating, and a few
days later, after strongly praising " The Gold
Bug " which he had just read, he says : " Do not
trouble yourself about anybody's gloriometer. . . .
I have always misunderstood Poe from thinking
him one of the Graham and Godey species, but I
find him as different as possible. I think that you
will like him well' when you come to know him
personally." Briggs copied " The Raven " into
his magazine and wrote enthusiastically to Lowell
about it. But Lowell was deeply offended by what

164 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

he termed " the grossness and vulgarity " of Poe's
treatment of Longfellow, especially in his offhand
allusion to Mrs. Longfellow and her children.
Briggs again came to Poe's defence. " The allu
sion to Mrs. Longfellow," he wrote, " was only a
playful allusion to an abstract Mrs. Longfellow,
for Poe did not know even that Longfellow was
married ; look at the thing again and you will see
that it contains nothing offensive. Poe has, in
deed, a very high admiration for Longfellow, and
so he will say before he is done. For my own part
I did not use to think well of Poe, but my love for
you and implicit confidence in your judgment led
me to abandon all my prejudices against him, when
I read your account of him. The Rev. Mr. Gris-
wold, of Philadelphia, told me some abominable
lies about him, but a personal acquaintance with
him has induced me to think highly of him. Per
haps some Philadelphian has been whispering foul
things in your ear about him. Doubtless his sharp
manner has made him many enemies. But you
will think better of him when you meet him."

Lowell, however, refused to be convinced. " The
Rev. Mr. Gi-iswold," he said petulantly, " is an ass,
and, what 's more, a knave, and even if he had said
anything against Poe, I should not have believed
it. But neither he nor any one else ever did. I
remain of my old opinion about the allusion to Mrs.
Longfellow. I remain of my old opinion about
Poe, and I have no doubt that Poe estimates Long
fellow's poetical abilities more highly than I do
perhaps, but I nevertheless do not like his two last

IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 165

articles. I still think Poe an invaluable contribu
tor, but I like such articles as his review of Miss
Barrett better than these last."

Up to this time Lowell appears to have known
Poe only through correspondence.1 A few weeks
later, when he was returning from Philadelphia to
Cambridge, he called upon him, but the interview
gave little satisfaction, due to the fact, mentioned
by Mr. Briggs, that Poe was tipsy at the time. A
few weeks later Lowell defended himself, in a
letter to Briggs, against a charge of plagiarism
made by Poe, and summed up his impressions as
follows : " Poe, I am afraid, is wholly lacking in
that element of manhood which, for want of a better
name, we call character. It is something quite dis
tinct from genius, — though all great geniuses are
endowed with it. Hence we always think of Dante
Alighieri, of Michelangelo, of Will Shakespeare,
of John Milton, — while of such men as Gibbon
and Hume we merely recall the works, and think
of them as the author of this and that. As I prog
nosticated, I have made Poe my enemy by doing
him a service. . . . Poe wishes to kick down the

1 Lowell's letters to Poe may be fonnd in an article with that
title, edited by Mr. Woodberry, and printed in Scribner's Maga
zine, August, 1894. Those of Poe to Lowell appear in Mr. Wood-
berry's volume on Poe in the American Men of Letters series.
Lowell's letters, which run from 19 November, 1842, when he
was beginning- his Pioneer venture, to 12 December, 1S44, just
before his marriage, are occupied mainly with solicitation of con
tributions, interest in Poe's work, and efforts at obtaining oppor
tunities for Poe to lecture in Boston. They have slight value as
illustrations of Lowell's life, save as they show his eagerness to
help a brother author, and his keen interest in letters.

1GG JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

ladder by which he rose. He is welcome. But he
does not attack me at a weak point. He probably
cannot conceive of anybody's writing for anything
but a newspaper reputation or for posthumous
fame, which is much the same thing magnified by
distance. I have quite other aims."

Finally, Briggs himself lost all patience with Poe,
and replied to this letter : " You have formed a
correct estimate of Poe's characterless character.
I have never met a person so utterly deficient of
high motive. He cannot conceive of anybody's
doing anything except for his own personal advan
tage ; and he says, with perfect sincerity and entire
unconsciousness of the exposition which it makes
of his own mind and heart, that he looks upon all
reformers as madmen ; and it is for this reason that
he is so great an egoist ; he cannot conceive why
the world should not feel an interest in whatever
interests him, because he feels no interest himself
in what does not personally concern him."

In all his critical writing after this time, Lowell
never discussed Poe. His offhand characterization
in " A Fable for Critics,"

" Three fifths of him genius and two fifths sheer fudge,

Who has written some things quite the Lest of their kind,
But the heart somehow seems all squeezed out hy the mind,"

passes at once into a lecture on his treatment of
Longfellow. Poe was not a blackboard on which
Lowell wrote his own virtues, but it is an illus
tration of the dominant ethical note in Lowell's
nature, especially at this time, that open as he was

IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 167

to the influence of poetry, and keenly sensitive to
the melody and color to be found in exquisite lan
guage, he could not detach poetry from character.
In his leaning toward reform, he tried to take
poetry with him as a fellow-worker, but I do not
think this really affected his judgment of Poe, and
Briggs's amusing report of Poe's consignment of
reformers to the mad-house was not likely to gall
him ; his sense of humor would correct any irrita
tion. But Lowell did hold his head high and was
intoxicated with the spirit of idealism ; he and his
wife stimulated each other, and breathing this air,
he was not in a mood to be indulgent toward what
he conceived to be lower ideals. The biographical
essay which a few years later he wrote on Keats
shows clearly how desirous he was of bringing the
few known facts of that poet's life into accord with
a lofty conception of the poetic spirit ; standing
uncomfortably near Poe, he was in danger of inter
preting his poetry by the comment which his life
afforded.

Although literature then as always was the con
stant factor in Lowell's resolve, the circumstances
in which he was placed, and his own uneasy sense
that he ought to bear his part in the moral upris
ing, led him to expend a good deal of energy this
winter in political and ethical writing. He was
living in the midst of the Society of Friends and
breathing an atmosphere of anti-slavery reform ;
the great debate on Texas was raging, and, more
than all, his wife by his side kept a steady flame
of zeal burning. He let himself out once in verse

168 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

when he sent to the Boston Courier some stanzas
headed " Another Rallying Cry by a Yankee," in
which, with a vehemence that allowed little breath
ing space for wit or humor, he declaimed against
the iniquity of the Texas resolutions, then on the
eve of passage, and made a passionate appeal to his
native state to hold herself aloof from any compro
mise with slavery.

" 0 Spirit of the noble Past, when the old Bay State was free,"

he began, and employed all the resources of type
to make his protest heard : —

" And though all other deeds of thine, dear Fatherland, should be
Washed out, like writing upon sand, by Time's encroaching sea,
That single word shall stand sublime, nor perish with the rest,
'THOUGH THE WHOLE WORLD SANCTION SLAVERY, IN GOD'S
NAME WE PROTEST ! ' '

The final stanza was a burst of state independence :

" No, if the old Bay State were sunk, and, as in days of yore,
One single ship within her sides the hope of Freedom bore,
Run up again the pine tree flag, and on the chainless sea
That flag should mark, where'er it waved, the island of the free ! "

In these verses, as in others of a similar nature,
Lowell seems almost to have followed the lead of
Whittier, who employed the same stanza in several
of his anti-slavery poems written before this time.

In his eager, impulsive desire to right wrongs,
and his impatience at compromise, he chafed under
the restraints laid upon him. The rebuff he re
ceived when he undertook to scarify the conscience
of Congress in the pages of The Broadway Journal
irritated him. He had hoped that the Journal
would be a " powerful weapon in the hands of re-

IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 169

form," and was disheartened. » The reason I have
written no prose for him (Briggs)," he wrote his
friend Carter, "has been because I knew not what
to write about. The Journal shut its doors in the
face of every subject in which I was mainly inter-
ested, and I could not bring myself (in writing for
a friend especially) to undertake subjects in which,
feeling no interest, I could not possibly write
well." He had engaged to write regularly for the
Pennsylvania Freeman, but even here he did not,
in his own mind, have a clear field. " I do not
feel entirely free," he says in a letter to Carter,
" in what I write for the paper, as its conductors
are rather timid." That is the complaint of most
young reformers, and yet the constraint which ap
pears in his articles is due rather to the caution
with which he feels his way along a path where he
is likely to be misjudged than to any outside re
pressive influence. At least this may be inferred
from a reading of two articles which he contributed
to the Freeman and which were no doubt looked
upon as very radical utterances. They had for
their heading " The Church and Clergy," and were
deliberate inquiries into the nature of the religious
bodies in America as tested by the attitude which
they took, organically, toward the great question
of political reform, especially as regarded the sub
ject of slavery. In a letter to Longfellow written
a few weeks after this date, Lowell puts his belief
into two or three pregnant sentences. " Christ,"
he says, " has declared war against the Christian
ity of the world, and it must down. There is no

170 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

help for it. The Church, that great bulwark of
our practical Paganism, must be reformed from
foundation to weathercock. Shall we not wield a
trowel, nay, even carry the heavy bricks and mor
tar for such an enterprise? But I will not ride
over you with my hard-mouthed hobby."

In the two editorial articles referred to, Lowell
takes the ground that when there is dereliction to
pure ideals on the part of the more refined and
intellectual members of the church, especially of
those in the priestly order, there will be the
greater zeal of the more brutal and unintelligent
in defence of the church, and instances the cries of
the Jewish populace for the crucifixion of the Sa
viour, the mob at Athens that condemned Socrates
to drink the hemlock, and, taking a very recent
example : " It was the most brutal and degraded
of the English population which assaulted the
pure-minded Wesley,, and cock-fighting, horse-
racing, drunken priests and justices established
their orthodoxy to the satisfaction of so competent
a constituency by reviling or indicting him. Now
that it has become necessary to protest against
Protestantism, it is the ignorant and unthinking
who are so eager to defend the right of private
judgment by tarring and feathering all who differ
with them." The mass of men, Lowell goes on to
say, love an easy religion, which affords a cheap
and marketable kind of respectability. " Puritan
ism has always been unpopular among them as a
system which demands too much and pays too
little." The clergy, too, in the United States, being

IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 171

dependent upon their hearers for support, uncon
sciously slip into the habit of adapting themselves
to the prejudices and weaknesses of their sup
porters. Thus by degrees the church and religion
are held to be synonymous terms, and the church
becomes a kind of private estate, silent in the
face of a great evil which the great body of Chris
tian people has learned to tolerate. In point of
fact true religious sentiment is the most power
ful weapon in the world against slavery and all
other social vices, but the religious system of the
country as corrupted by connivance with evil is the
greatest obstacle in the way. The only sure way
of accomplishing its great object is for the church
to keep in advance of popular morality, and " the
surest and safest test for deciding when the time
has arrived for the church to take another step
forward is by observing whether it is reverenced
by the wisest of its members as merely an external
symbol of some former manifestation of Divinity,
or is reverenced as containing in itself a present
and living Divineness."

But why, it might be asked, should the clergy
be picked out for blame in the matter of upholding
slavery, rather than any other class, as that of the
merchants for example ? The answer is plain. If
the church professed to be no more than a society
of private citizens meeting once a week, the clergy
man would be simply the chairman of the gather
ing, and a mouthpiece of the majority. But the
church sets up the claim to be of divine origin and
the depository of truth. If this be so, it should

172 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

always be in advance of public opinion. " It
should not wait till the Washingtonians, by acting
the part which, in virtue of the station it arrogates
to itself, should have been its own, had driven it
to sign the pledge and hold fellowship with the
degraded and fallen. It should not wait until the
Abolitionists, by working a change in the senti
ment of the people, have convinced it that it is more
politic to sympathize with the slave than with the
slave-owner, before it ventures to lisp the alphabet
of anti-slavery. The glorious privilege of leading
the forlorn hope of truth, of facing the desperate
waves of prejudice, of making itself vile in the
eyes of men by choosing the humblest means of
serving the despised cause of the master it professes
to worship, all these belong to it in right of the
position it assumes." And he calls upon the
clergy to produce certificates of martyrdom before
he will accept the claims they set up for them
selves.

The whole discussion is characterized by sincer
ity and a scarcely veiled sarcasm, and is interesting
not only as showing Lowell's thought at the time
on a burning subject, but also as disclosing a cer
tain academic air as if he had written carefully and
with restraint, perhaps thinking how it would sound
to his father's ear. There is hardly more than a
faint suggestion of the wit and humor which marked
his later political writing, and there is one passage
which may be noted as distinctly literary in tone.
" In many parts of Germany," he writes, " there
are legends of buried churches and convents, whose

IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 173

bells are often heard, and in which, now and then
some person by a lucky chance can hear the monks
chanting the ritual of many centuries ago. It
seems to us that the religion of our churches is of
very much the same subterranean and traditionary
kind. To one walking in the pure light of upper
day, the sound of their service seems dim and far
off, and, if he catches a word here and there, it is
an obsolete language which does not appeal to the
present heart and soul, but only to a vague rever
ence for what is ancient, a mysterious awe for what
is past."

The winter had been passed in this experimental
fashion, Mrs. Lowell translating poems from the
German by her husband's side, as he wrote now
verse, now prose, intent on the questions of the day,
yet never really giving himself out except now and
then in some spontaneous bit of poetry. They
made hosts of friends in Philadelphia and spent
the last few weeks of their stay on a visit to the
Davis family, with whom they had become close
companions. Mrs. Hallowell, who was a child at
the time, recalled the delight that attended their
stay, especially the pleasure given the children by
Mrs. Lowell, who told them fairy tales and recited
ballads, giving the Caldon Low in a soft crooning
voice sweeter than singing. They took a short
driving tour with their hosts through Chester
County, but near the end of May set out on their
return to Cambridge, stopping by the way for a
week's visit with Mr. and Mrs. Briggs in Staten
Island. They went home by way of Albany in order

174 JAMES RtJSSELL LOWELL

to see Page, and by the middle of June were estab
lished at Elm wood, where they formed one house
hold with Lowell's father, mother, and sister.

Lowell had not found himself out yet. He had,
indeed, a premonitory consciousness of his strength.
" I shall do something as an author yet," he wrote
to Briggs, 21 August, 1845. " It is my laziness
and my dissatisfaction at everything I write that
prevents me from doing more." But he adds,
"there is something, too, in feeling that the best
part of your nature and your performance lies un-
mined and unappreciated." For the present he
seems to have written chiefly under the impulse
created by some sudden affair, as in the verses " On
the Capture of Fugitive Slaves near Washington,"
which appeared in the Boston Courier, 19 July,
1845. The lines were prefaced by this note to the
editor, Mr. Buckingham : —

" Reading lately in the newspapers an account of
the capture of some fugitive slaves, within a few
miles of the Capital of our Republic, I confess my
astonishment at finding no comments made upon
what seemed to me an act of unparalleled inhuman
ity. Thirty unfortunate disciples of the Declara
tion of Independence pursued and captured by some
two hundred armed minions of tyranny ! It seems
strange that a burst of indignation from one end
of our free country to the other did not follow so
atrocious a deed. At least it seemed a proper oc
casion for sympathy on the part of one of our daily
papers which a year or two ago indorsed Lord
Morpeth's sentiment that

IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 175

' Who would be free themselves most strike the blow.'

Though such a mode of emancipation is totally abhor
rent to my feelings, and though 1 would earnestly
deprecate any attempt at insurrection on the part
of our slave population, yet I confess to the weak
ness of being so far human in my feelings as to
sympathize deeply with these unhappy beings who
have been thwarted in their endeavor to convert
themselves from chattels into men by the peaceful
method of simply changing their geographical posi
tion. Under these feelings, and believing you to
be a man with sufficient confidence in the justness
of your own opinions not to fear to publish senti
ments which may chance to go beyond or even di
rectly contravene your own, I wrote the following
lines."

There is a prophetic ring to the verses which,
indicates how surely Lowell's poetic spirit had ab
sorbed the underlying truth of abolitionism. The
poem is far less declamatory, more profoundly
indignant than the Texas verses which he had
printed in the same paper. The intimation which
he gave in his prefatory note, that his sentiment
might be unacceptable even to so hearty and honest
a hater of slavery as Mr. Buckingham, plainly
points to the doubt expressed whether a higher
allegiance might not demand a revolt from the con
stitution and union if they were found to be the
impregnable defence of slavery, — a doubt which
was already certainty in the minds of the most radi
cal of the abolitionists ; but the stage of doubt was
as far as Lowell ever went, and this may be taken

176 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

as the utmost expression which he ever reached.1
The poem was vigorous enough to make an impres
sion, and successive numbers of the Courier show
two long-winded writers knocking away at the
spectre of Dissolution which the poem had raised.2
Although the summer of 1845 does not seem to
have yielded much in the way of verse or prose,
Lowell had quite definitely taken ground as a man
of letters. There was no more talk of the law, and
he even dropped lines of correspondence which had
marked his old carelessness of occupation. " You
hint in your last letter," he wrote to E. M. Davis
in October, " that it must be very easy for me to
write, because writing is my profession, while in
truth this is precisely what makes it hard. You
must recollect that it is vacation time with me when
the pen is out of my hand. Before I became an
author I used to write multitudes of letters to my
friends. Then, wherever I set my foot, thoughts
rose up before me short-winged and chirping as the
flights of grasshoppers which spring from the path
of one who walks in September stubble-fields. The
post-office was my safety-valve, which eased me in
a trice of all my too explosive thoughts, humors,
and moods. Now my thoughts take a higher and
wider flight, and are not so easily followed and

1 It may be noted that at the New England Anti-Slavery Con
vention held in Boston, 28 May, 1844, the issue of disunion was
plainly presented in a set of resolutions. The vote stood 250 in
favor to 24 in dissent. Among the number who voted " nay "
•were James Russell Lowell and Maria White. See William Lloyd
Garrison, iii. Ill, 112.

2 For a striking use of the poem, see infra, vol. ii. p. 137.

IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 177

defined by the eye. I confess that my opinions
seem to me of less importance." 1

By his regular and his random writing Lowell
had met the expense of his winter in Philadelphia,
and with his simple mode of life and his horror of
debt it was not a very serious problem which his
livelihood presented. Elmwood gave shelter, and
the young couple shared the family economy. A
little more ease, however, was to come through the
accession of Mrs. Lowell to a share in the estate of
her father, who died suddenly in September of this
year. " I suppose," Lowell writes in the letter just
quoted, " that when the estate is settled (Mr.
White died intestate) we shall be the possessors of
$ 20,000 or more. I confess I hardly feel so inde
pendent as before. I believe that in this age pov
erty needs to have apostles, and I had resolved to
be one, but I suppose God knows what is best for
me, or the event would not have happened. That
I should ever have lived to be such a nabob ! " 2

1 But his talk went on as unrestrictedly as ever. Long-fellow
records in his diary under date of 23 October, 1845 : " Lowell
passed the morning1 with me. Amiable enthusiast ! He pro
poses to write a book in favor of fanaticism."

2 It is a comment on Lowell's indifference to wealth that his
imagination did not take fire at the announcement of the dis
covery of gold in California. It may he said that his mind was
directed toward the immediate political consequences, hut he had
occasion to write upon the subject of the discovery, when this
alone engaged his attention. He was struck with some of the pic
turesque situations, but his reflections were mainly summed up in
these Avords : " We have never seen anything like the accounts
from California since we read that chapter of Candide, in which
Voltaire carries his hero to El Dorado. Supposing all we hear to
be true, it is hardly probable that gold will continue to be found

178 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

One of the effects of this modest fortune was to
give the Lowells a further sense of independence
and to lead them to form plans of travel and life
abroad, for from the first the frailty of Mrs. Low
ell's health had been a factor in all their problems.
They meant to go again to Philadelphia the next
spring, and they looked forward to going to Italy
in the coming fall for a two or three years' resi
dence. " Now that we know the amount of our
property," Mrs. Lowell wrote shortly after to Mrs.
Davis, " it seems quite doubtful whether we shall
be able to travel much ; but we can live in Italy as
cheaply as at home, and have all the advantages of
climate and beautiful works of art besides."

On the last day of the year their first child was
born, and they gave her the name of Blanche in
gentle allusion to Mrs. Lowell's maiden name.
Lowell wrote the news in a brief note on New
Year's Day, 1846, to Mr. Davis: "Our little
daughter Blanche was born yesterday afternoon at
3-£ o'clock. She is a very fine hearty child, very

there in such large quantities for any great length of time. It
•will doubtless become more and more scarce, and the difficulty of
obtaining it greater. After all, the gold mines which give the
surest and richest yield are the brain and the common earth. The
discovery of a new fertilizer is of more practical benefit than that
of the philosopher's stone would be ; the invention of the steam-
engine has created more wealth than the richest gold mines ; and
wise men are not wanting who believe that Fourier has given us
something better than a California. And why travel fifteen thou
sand miles around Cape Horn for a place to dig in ? Heaven
knows the earth wants more washing here than at Sacramento
River. Moreover, every one of us has a vein more or less profit
able, if it were only diligently worked." — "Eldorado," in Na
tional Anti-Slavery Standard, 21 December, 1848.

IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 179

fair and white, with red cheeks, and looks already
a month old. Maria, thank God, is quite well. . . .
Our fair has been eminently successful, more so
than any hithei'to. I received your tract only a
day or two since, having only been to Boston once
or twice for the last two months. I am much
obliged to you for it, though my thankfulness is
almost used up by the baby."

How happy the parents were in their anticipa
tion may be read in the affectionate terms in which
Lowell had confided their hopes late in August to
his friend Briggs. " Never mind what our child
will be (if it should be born safely), we can at least
enjoy our parentship now and fancy what glories
we please of our little darling. We have chris
tened it long ago. If she is a girl she is to be
named Blanche (White), a sweet name, thus unit
ing Maria's family name with mine. If a boy we
shall call him Perceval, that being the given name
of the first Lowle who set foot in America, and
having, moreover, a pretty diminutive (Percie), an
important thing for a boy. Now, do not set your
wits at work to discover prophetically the unhear-
worthy nickname which the perverse ingenuity of
boys will twist out of it at school. He shall never
go to school. The only reason I have for a prefer
ence of sex is that girls ordinarily resemble the
father most, and boys the mother. Therefore I
hope for a boy, and if you knew Maria (I call her
mother already) as well as I do, you would hope
so too. It is true I can never persuade her of
the force of this argument — because she does not

180 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

know how good she is. When people arrive at
that pitch of consciousness they are generally good
for nothing." And then follows the half-prophetic
passage : " I have never forgotten the sympathy I
felt with your hopes and your disappointment in a
similar case. ... I look upon death so constantly
and surely as but a continuation of life (after the
glad removal or subsidence of the plethora of flesh
which now chokes half the spirit out of us) that I
shall be quite willing to send before us such an
ambassador as our little angel would be if he goes
sooner than we do. At all events, nothing can ever
take away from me the joy I have already had in
it." The haunting fear which every young father
has at such a time, and which Lowell intimates in
these lines, was not made real at once, but the child
lived with them only a brief fourteen months. It
is touching to find Mrs. Lowell a month before the
birth of her child writing verses of profound sym
pathy entitled " The Slave Mother," in which she
reflects the anguish such a mother feels on the
birth of her child ; and on the same day Lowell
was writing his poem " The Falcon," though in its
original form, entitled " The Falconer," it was
longer and filled with a certain savage indignation
over the quarry upon which the falcon, Truth, de
scends. Both poems were contributed to " The
Liberty Bell," published for the anti-slavery ba
zaar which was held each December in Boston.
This was the social rally of the abolitionists and a
resource with which to meet the modest demands of
a crusade into which men and women threw them-

IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 181

selves without counting the cost. Before and after
her marriage Mrs. Lowell took an active part in
the bazaar under the generalship of Mrs. Chapman.
Lowell hits off the characteristics of those who
were conspicuous in the local movement most wit
tily in his " Letter from Boston," which he sent to
the Pennsylvania Freeman, at the close of 1846.
The little child filled a large place in Lowell's
letters to his intimate friends. Briggs had sent
a message to the newcomer, and Lowell replied :
" Blanche was asleep when I read your kind wishes
about her, and I did not dare to disturb her in an
occupation in which she is sedulously perfecting
herself by the most diligent practice. She has not
yet learned our method of speech, and I to my sor
row have almost forgotten hers, so that I cannot
honestly send any authentic messages from her to
you. If you have been more happy than I in re
taining a knowledge of the dialect of your infancy,
you will perhaps be able to make something out of
her remarks on hearing that she had loving friends
so far away. ' A goo (pianissimo) all goo, errrrrr,
ahg — (cut off by a kind of melodious jug-jug in
her throat, as if she liked the phrase so well she
must needs try to swallow it) ah ! (fortissimo) a
goo,' followed by a smile which began in the dim
ple on her chin, and thence spread, like the circles
round a pebble thrown into sunshiny water, with
a golden ripple over the whole of her person, being
most distinctly ecstatic in her fingers and toes.
The speech was followed by a searching glance at
her father, in whose arms she had her throne, to

182 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

assure herself of his identity, and of her consequent
security."

A more exact knowledge of the amount of the
legacy received from Mr. White's estate and the
income to be derived from it led the Lowells to
abandon their first intention of going abroad soon,
but, apparently in anticipation of such an emer
gency, Lowell had resolved to acquire a better col
loquial knowledge of French. " As an evidence of
my proficiency," he writes to Briggs, " let me set
down here an impromptu translation of that Chevy
Chace of the nursery, ' Three children sliding on
the ice.' As it is my first attempt at the ' higher
walks ' of French poetry, you must read it with
due allowance.

" Trois enfants glissants sur la glace,
Tous en un jour d'e'te',
Tous tomberent, as it came to pass,
Les autres s'enfuyaient." 1

There was an incident at this time which illus
trates the sensitiveness of the anti-slavery mind.
The weight of literature was thrown against slav-

1 Mr. Briggs was highly entertained by the French exercise,
and asked : " Who is your master ? But never mind. Let me
recommend you to an incomparable one who had the honor of
teaching Talleyrand a new language (English) to help him con
ceal his thoughts. I mean Cobbett. If you have never seen his
French grammar, get it by all means and read it, if you do not
study it ; and then read his English grammar, which you will find
more amusing than the Comic Latin Grammar." Lowell does not
seem to have followed his advice immediately. At least he wrote
to me three or four years before his death : " I never read any
English grammar in my life, thank God, except Cobbett's a few
years ago, and in that I found errors of ignorance, — as was to be
expected."

IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 183

ery, and it was a matter of pride and rejoicing
that the most popular American poet, Longfellow,
should bear his testimony in a thin volume of
"Poems on Slavery." But a Philadelphia pub
lishing house, Gary & Hart, brought out a hand
somely illustrated volume of his poetical works,
from which this group of poems was omitted, and
the leaders of the anti-slavery movement were
indignant at what they regarded as the poet's
pusillanimity. Their journals attacked him bit
terly, especially the National Anti-Slavery Stand
ard, edited by Mrs. Chapman, Edmund Quincy,
and Sydney Howard Gay. Lowell's comments on
the matter are interesting as throwing light on the
attitude of his mind upon the question of the poet
and his mission, which we have seen was so vital
a one in his early history. He wrote to Briggs 18
February, 1846 :..."! never wrote a letter
which was not a sincere portrait of my mind at
the time, and therefore never one whose contents
can hold a rod over me. My pen has not yet
traced a line of which I am either proud or
ashamed, nor do I believe that many authors have
written less from without than I, and therefore
more piously. And this puts me in mind of Long
fellow's suppression of his anti-slavery pieces.
Sydney Gay wishes to know whether I think he
spoke too harshly of the affair. I think he did,
even supposing the case to be as he put it, and this
not because I agree with what he tells me is your
notion of the matter — that it is interfering with
the freedom of an author's will (though I think

184 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

you were ironing with that grave face of yours)
— for I do not think that an author has a right
to suppress anything that God has given him —
but because I believe that Longfellow esteemed
them of inferior quality to his other poems. For
myself, when I was printing my second volume of
poems, Owen wished to suppress a certain ' Song
sung at an Anti-Slavery Picnic.' I never saw
him, but he urged me with I know not what
worldly arguments. My only answer was — ' Let
all the others be suppressed if you will — that I
will never suppress.' I believe this was the first
audible knock my character made at the door of
Owen's heart — he loves me now and I him. My
calling is clear to me. I am never lifted up to any
peak of vision — and moments of almost fearful
inward illumination I have sometimes — but that,
when I look down, in hope to see some valley of
the Beautiful Mountains, I behold nothing but
blackened ruins, and the moans of the downtrodden
the world over, but chiefly here in our own land,
come up to my ear instead of the happy songs of
the husbandmen reaping and binding the sheaves
of light — yet these, too, I hear not seldom. Then
I feel how great is the office of Poet, could I but
even dare to hope to fill it. Then it seems as if
my heart would break in pouring out one glorious
song that should be the gospel of Reform, full of
consolation and strength to the oppressed, yet fall
ing gently and restoringly as dew on the withered
youth-flowers of the oppressor. That way my
madness lies."

IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 185

In the same letter, with the long-reaching specu
lation of a father over his first child, the subject
of Blanche's training is touched upon with a half
serious, half playful exaggeration. Lowell had
been writing humorously of his chivalric feelings
toward dependents like the maid of all work in the
house, and he breaks out : "I mean to bring up
Blanche to be as independent as possible of all
man kind. I was saying the other day to her
mother (who has grown lovelier than ever) that
I hoped she would be a great, strong, vulgar, mud-
piidding-baking, tree-climbing little wench. I shall
teach her to swim, to skate, and to walk twenty
miles a day as her father can — and by the time
she is old enough, I do not despair of seeing the
world so good that she can walk about at night
alone without any danger. You ask the color of
her eyes. They are said to be like her father's, —
but, in my opinion, they are of quite too heavenly
a blue for that. But I do not think the color of
the eyes of much import. I never notice it in
those I love, or in any eyes where I can see deeper
than the cornea and iris. I do not know the color
of my father's eyes, or of any of my sisters' (ex
cept from hearsay), nor should I know that of
Maria's except from observations for that special
end. But where your glance is arrested at the sur
face, where these windows are, as it were, daubed
over with paint (like those of rooms where menial
or unsightly offices are performed which we do not
wish the world to see, or where something is exhib
ited for pay) to balk insight — then the color is

18G JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

the chief sight noticeable. I do not believe that
the finest eyes have any special hue — and this is
probably the ground for the fallacy that poets' eyes
are gray — a kind of neutral color."

In January, 1846, the publication was begun of
the London Daily News, a paper which repre
sented the most advanced liberal thought in poli
tics and was for a short time conducted by Dickens.
For this paper Lowell agreed to write a series of
articles on " Anti-slavery in the United States."
His name was not to appear. Indeed, the scheme
intended an historical sketch of the reform by one
in sympathy with it, but not confessedly by an
abolitionist. In pursuance of the plan four arti
cles appeared in the months of February, March,
April, and May, 1846, and the manner of treat
ment plainly supposed a much longer continuance,
but it is probable that certain changes in the man
agement of the paper rendered a continuance inex
pedient ; for in June the paper was lessened from
a double sheet of eight pages to a single one of
four, and the price reduced, leaving small oppor
tunity for the leisurely essays which had formerly
found place. The four papers did little more than
clear the way, and really brought the historical
sketch only down to the establishment of The Lib
erator by Mr. Garrison. For the most part the
treatment is little more than an orderly and some
what perfunctory recital of well-known facts, but
once or twice the writer breaks forth into his more
personal speech. Thus in the first article occurs
this passage : —

IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 187

"Unless we draw an erring augury from the
past, that devoted little band who have so long
maintained the bleak Thermopyla? of Freedom, re
membering those in bonds as bound with them, as
now they are the scoff and by-word of prospering
iniquity, so will they be reckoned the Saints, Con
fessors, and Martyrs in the calendar of coming
time, and the statues of Garrison, Maria Chapman,
Phillips, Quincy, and Abby Kelley will fill those
niches in the National Valhalla which a degraded
public sentiment has left empty for such earthen
demi-gods as Jackson, Webster and Clay." Again
the final article, after dealing with the Missouri
Compromise, introduces Mr. Garrison upon the
scene by quoting the preface to the first number
of The Liberator, and goes on to say : —

" Now for the first time indeed Slavery felt itself
assailed genuinely and in thorough earnest. But
editors and other proprietors of public opinion
manufactories in the Free States were slower of
perception. They had not the warning of that
instinctive terror which informed the slaveholder
of the approach of danger. But they were soon
satisfied of the dreadful truth that there existed
in their very midst one truly sincere and fearless
man, and instantly a prolonged shriek of execra
tion and horror quavered from the Aroostook to
the Red River. They saw, with a thrill of appre
hension for the security of their offices or of their
hold upon public consideration what treasonable
conclusions might be legitimately drawn from their
own harmless premises, harmless only so long as

188 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

there was no man honest enough to make an appli
cation of them, and so cast suspicion on the motives
of all. If the pitch and tow fulminations of Sal-
moneus had been suddenly converted into genuine
bolts of Jupiter, he could not have dropped them
from his hands with a more confounded alacrity.
Here was a man gifted with a most excruciating
sincerity and frankness, a hungry conscience that
could not be sated with the cheap workhouse gruel
of smooth words, and inconveniently addicted to
thinking aloud."

The article closes with this striking diagnosis : —
" The advent of Garrison was indeed an event
of historical moment. The ban of outlawry was
set on Slavery, and its doom was sealed. It mat
ters not that since that time Slavery has won some
of its most alarming victories. The nucleus of a
sincere uncompromising hostility to it was formed.
A clear issue between right and wrong, disen
tangled from the mists of extraneous interests, was
presented to men's minds. The question was re
moved from the dust and bewilderment of political
strife to the clear and calm retirements of God's
justice and individual conscience. Henceforth the
struggle must be not between the Northern and
Southern States, but between barbarism and civili
zation, between cruelty and mercy, between evil
and good. This was already in itself a victory, a
triumph which would have been enough to round
the long life struggle of a reformer with peace.
Exaltation was achieved by the mere look, as it
were, of an unknown, solitary, and friendless youth,

IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 189

so full was it of the potent conjuration of honesty
and veracity. Whatever may be the contents of
government mails and official bulletins, the shining
feet of the messengers of Nature are constant and
swift to bring to the ears of the lowly servant of
Truth at least the sustaining news — that God still
exists, and that He may select even the bruised
reed for his instrument."

It is not materially anticipating to record here
what Lowell wrote of Garrison a couple of years
later, when he was defining his own position on
abolitionism, to his friend Briggs : " Garrison is so
used to standing alone that, like Daniel Boone, he
moves away as the world creeps up to him, and
goes farther into the wilderness. He considers
every step a step forward, though it be over the
edge of a precipice. But, with all his faults (and
they are the faults of his position), he is a great
and extraordinary man. His work may be over,
but it has been a great work. Posterity will for
get his hard words, and remember his hard work.
I look upon him already as an historical person
age, as one who is in his niche. ... I love you
(and love includes respect) ; I respect Garrison
(respect does not include love). There never has
been a leader of Reform who was not also a black
guard. Remember that Garrison was so long in
a position where he alone was right and all the
world wrong, that such a position has created in
him a habit of mind which may remain, though cir
cumstances have wholly changed. Indeed, a mind
of that cast is essential to a Reformer. Luther

190 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

was as infallible as any man that ever held St.
Peter's keys." But the most condensed expression
of his feeling toward this remarkable man, who
so dominated the anti-slavery movement, is to be
found in the verses addressed to him beginning —

" In a small chamber, friendless and unseen." 1

In May, 1846, occurred one of those personal
incidents which stirred deeply the heart of the anti-
slavery crusader and was made the occasion of pub
lic testimony. The Rev. Charles Turner Torrey,
who had been an active writer and worker in the
cause, and in 1834 was shut up in the penitentiary
in Baltimore for having aided slaves to escape, died
in May, 1846, of disease brought on by ill usage.
He was of New England birth and his body was
brought to Boston for burial. Besides the burial
service there was a public meeting in Faneuil Hall
on the evening of 18 May. Dr. Henry I. Bowditch,
an ardent supporter of the anti-slavery cause and
one of the committee in charge, wrote to Lowell on
the 3d of the month, telling him that private ad
vices led them to expect hourly the news of Torrey's
death, and that the plan was on foot for a public
funeral service. " If this is done," he says, " we
shall hope to hear from the poets of our land, the
true ministers of God and of Christ, at the present

1 At the close of 1866 a testimonial was presented to Mr. Gar
rison when he retired from active service, and Lowell was the
medium of certain English subscriptions, among them that of
John Bright. In sending this Lowell writes to Mr. Garrison :
" Nothing could have been more in keeping with the uniform wis
dom of your anti-slavery leadership than the time you chose for
resigning it."

IN THE AXTI-SLAVERY RANKS 191

era. . . . May I receive from your heart of love
and high-souled honor sentiments such as I have
not a few times obtained from your free-hearted
poetry ? " No appeal could have used so cogent an
argument as that which thus characterized the poet,
and Lowell responded with the lines, " On the
Death of Charles Turner Torrey," which were read
at the meeting in Faneuil Hall by Dr. Channing.
Dr. Bowditch thanked the poet for the response to
his request, but doubted if the poem was not of too
charitable a tenor. " Your poetry," he says, " is a
harbinger of better hours, but not for this century,
as I fear we have missed the great idea of our exist
ence and a new cycle of time must pass its round,
and a new, a lovelier race of beings must settle on
this earth ere man shall truly appreciate the divine
doctrine you enunciate in the last line of your
verses."

Lowell had now become clearly identified with
the anti-slavery cause and did not shrink from using
the phrase " we abolitionists." His reputation as
a poet had steadily risen. He was contemplating
a second series of his " Conversations," and though
he rarely used the instrument of poetry in direct
attack, much of his verse sounded those notes of
freedom and truth which were, even when ab
stractly used, rightly regarded as dominant notes
in the songs of the times. The leaders of the anti-
slavery cause welcomed him as an important coad
jutor. At this time the National Anti- Slavery
Standard was passing through one of the several
changes sure to overtake the management of a

192 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

journal which was the organ of such a bundle of
individualities as would make up a reform party.
The Standard was the official paper of the Amer
ican Anti-Slavery Society, as the Liberator was
the individual mouthpiece of Mr. Garrison. The
Standard had been conducted successively by Mrs.
Lydia Maria Child and her husband, David Lee
Child. The former, who had marked literary abil
ity and a fondness for the art of literature, had
directed the paper in such a way as to win the
attention of other than pronounced abolitionists;
the latter had a stronger interest in legal and con
stitutional questions, and his disquisitions, which
were inordinately long, must have wearied the
readers whom it was desirable to gain over. Those
who merely wished to hear their beliefs sounded
may have had no fault to find, but these did not
need conversion. The paper, therefore, passed in
1844 into the hands of Mrs. Chapman, Edmund
Quincy,1 and Sydney Howard Gay, who augmented
the energy and diversity of the journal, but did
not succeed in arresting the decline of its subscrip
tion list. In the spring of 1846 the paper had
only about 1400 paying subscribers.

A further change seemed desirable, and the sen
sible one was made of concentrating the responsi
bility in the hands of one person, Mr. Gay, and
endeavoring to reenforce him with an imposing list
of regular contributors. This list was published

1 It is greatly to be regretted that the important correspond
ence of Quincy and Lowell does not exist. By agreement each
destroyed the letters of the other.

IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 193

11 June, 1846, and comprised these names : Eliza
Lee Follen, Rev. John Weiss, Charles F. Briggs,
Wendell Phillips, James Russell Lowell, Maria
Weston Chapman, Dr. William F. Channing,
Rev. Thomas T. Stone, Edmund Quincy, and, a
little later, Rev. Samuel May. It will be seen thus
that there was a tolerable admixture of literature
with polemics. Lowell had been urged to take a
prominent place, and consented out of readiness to
cast in his lot with the men and women who were
heading the forlorn hope. He was perfectly aware,
however, of a certain incompatibility of temper and
aims which disqualified him from an unreserved
submersion of his powers in this cause. The letter
in which he gives in his adherence to the plan
defines with much clearness his own consciousness
of his vocation, and the very humorousness of the
introduction intimates that he held off from the
task of stating his position, as well as exhibits a mer
curial temperament that would inevitably refuse
to be kept within very exact limits. The letter is
so important a disclosure of Lowell's mind at this
time that it must be given entire, though the most
significant part has already been printed by Mr.
Norton. Mr. Gay had written him under date of
May, 1846 : " It is with no little satisfaction that I
welcome you into our company of standard-bearers
to the anti-slavery host. I have long wished to see
you actively engaged among us, and even had I no
personal interest in the matter, the position you
have chosen is precisely the one I should best like
to see you in. You could nowhere do more good,

194 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

and in no other way could you become so thoroughly
identified with the cause. It is the historical
cause of our day, and as the Future will know you
as a Poet, she should find in our records additional
evidence that you understood and fulfilled your
mission."

To Sydney Howard Gay.

ELMWOOD, June 16, 1846.

MY DEAR GAY, — if l there be any disjoint-
edness in this letter, you must lay it to the fact
that I am officiating this morning as general nur
seryman and babytender, and am consequently
obliged every now and then to ripple the otherwise
smooth current of my epistolary communications
with such dishevelled oratorical flourishes as "kitser,
kee — eetser!" "jigger jig, jigger jig!" and the
like accompanied with whatever extemporary hush-
money may be within grasp in the shape of spoons,
whistles, pieces of paper and rattles. As I can
conceive of no severer punishment that could be
inflicted on certain authors than to be Robinson
Crusoed on some desolate island with no companion
but the offspring of their brain, so I do not know
of any blessing more absorbing of all the faculties,
demanding more presence of mind and more of that
eternal vigilance which is the price of liberty, but
which in this case fails to attain it, than that of
being islanded in a room eighteen feet square with
the " sole daughter of one's house and home." Then,

1 The curious reader may see here one of the little idiosyncra
sies in which Lowell indulged throughout his life, though this is
one of the first instances I have noted.

IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 195

besides these parental responsibilities, there are the
aliena negotia centum which have in the present
instance made a gap of three hours between this
sentence and the last. Added to all these is the
metallic pen which I resisted manfully, but to which
I have succumbed at last, and which, while it oblit
erates all distinctions of chirography, has, in con
junction with the other accoutrements of easy writ
ing (such as Reviews and newspapers), hastened
the decline and fall, and finally made complete
shipwreck of the letterwriters, as well as of the
foliomakers. It is no longer ' the mob of gentlemen
who write with ease,' but the very mob itself — that
profanum mdgus whom Horace Naso (sic) would
have us hate and keep at arm's length — can buy
steel pens by the gross and proceed Master of arts
per saltum. We have got now to that pitch when
uneducated men (self-educated they are called) are
all the rage, and the only learned animals who con
tinue to be popular are pigs. The public will rush
after a paper which they are told is edited by a
practical printer, and is eager to shape its ideas
after the model of men who have none. We shall
ere long see advertised " Easy lessons in Latin by a
gentleman who can bring testimonials that he
knows no more of the language than Mr. Senator
Webster ; " " The High School Reader, being a se
lection of popular pieces for reading and declama
tion by a Lady, who is just learning the alphabet
under the distinguished tuition of herself, and who is
nearly mistress of that delightful melange of literary
miscellanies." The injury to letters arising from

196 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

an author's losing that space for meditation which
was formerly afforded him by the wise necessity of
mending his pen is incalculable. Every one nowa
days can write decently and nobody writes well.
" Painfulness " is obsolete as a thing as well as in
the capacity of a noun. No more Horace Wai-
poles, no more Baxters, and Whole Duties of
men!

But one would think that I had the whole sum
mer before me for the writing of this letter. Let
me come a little nearer the matter in hand. I
wish a distinct understanding to exist between us
in regard to my contributions for the Standard.
When Mrs. Chapman first proposed that I should
become a contributor I told her frankly that it was
a duty for which (having commenced author very
early and got indurated in certain modes of author
ship and life) I was totally unfitted. I was satis
fied with the Standard as it was. The paper has
never been so good since I have seen it, and no
abolitionist could reasonably ask a better. I feared
that an uncoalescing partnership of several minds
might deprive the paper of that unity of conception
and purpose in which the main strength of every
understanding lies. This, however, I did not urge,
because I knew that a change was to be made at
any rate. At the same time I was not only willing
but desirous that my name should appear, because
I scorned to be indebted for any share of my modi
cum of popularity to my abolitionism without in
curring at the same time whatever odium might be
attached to a complete identification with a body

IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 197

of heroic men and women whom not to love and
admire would prove me unworthy of either of those
sentiments, and whose superiors in all that consti
tutes true manhood and womanhood I believe never
existed. There were other considerations which
weighed heavily with me to decline the office alto
gether. In the first place, I was sure that Mrs.
Chapman and Mr. Garrison greatly overrated my
popularity and the advantage which it would be to
the paper to have my name attached to it. I am
not flattering myself (I have too good an opinion
of myself to do so), but judge from something Gar
rison said to me. It is all nonsense. However it
may be in that glorious Hereafter (toward which
no man who is good for anything can help casting
half an eye) the reputation of a poet who has a
high idea of his vocation, is resolved to be true to
that vocation and hates humbug, must be small in
his generation. The thing matters nothing to me,
one way or the other, except when it chances to
take in those whom I respect, as in the present
case. I am teres atque rotundus, a microcosm in
myself, rny own author, public, critic, and poster
ity, and care for no other. But we abolitionists
must get rid of a habit we have fallen into of affirm
ing all the geese who come to us from the magic
circle of Respectability to be swans. I said so
about Longfellow and I said so about myself.
What does a man more than his simple duty in
coming out for the truth ? and if we exhaust our
epithets of laudation at this stage of the business,
what shall we do if the man turns out to be a real

198 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

reformer, and does more than his duty ? Beside,
is it any sacrifice to be in the right? Has not
being an abolitionist (as Emerson says of hell) its
" infinite satisfactions " as well as those infiniti
guai that Dante tells us of ? To my mind

" All other pleasures are not -worth its pains."

In the next place (turn back a page or two and
you will find that I have laid down a " firstly "),
if I have any vocation, it is the making of verse.
When I take my pen for that, the world opens
itself ungrudgingly before me, everything seems
clear and easy as it seems sinking to the bottom
would be as one leans over the edge of his boat in
one of those dear coves at Fresh Pond. But, when
I do prose, it is Inmta Minerva. I feel as if I were
wasting time and keeping back my message. My
true place is to serve the cause as a poet. Then
my heart leaps on before me into the conflict. I
write to you frankly as becomes one who is to be
your fellow-worker. I wish you to understand
clearly my capabilities that you may not attribute
that to lukewarmness or indolence which is truly
but an obedience to my Demon. Thirdly (I be
lieve it is thirdly), I have always been a very
Quaker in following the Light and writing only
when the Spirit moved. This is a tower of strength
which one must march out of in working for a
weekly newspaper, and every man owes it to him
self, so long as he does the duty which he sees, to
remain here impregnably intrenched.

Now, it seems to me that we contributors should

IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 199

write just enough to allow you this privilege of
only writing when the wind sits fair. Having
stated the poetical cons, I will now state the plain
pros of the matter. I will help you as much as
I can and ought. I had rather give the cause
one good poem than a thousand indifferent prose
articles. I mean to send all the poems I write (on
whatever subject) first to the Standard, except such
arrows as I may deem it better to shoot from the
ambushment of the Courier, because the old En
emy offers me a fairer mark from that quarter. I
will endeavor also to be of service to you in your
literary selections.

I have told you what / expect to do. You
must tell me in return what you expect me to do.
I agree with you entirely in your notions as to the
imprint and the initials.1 The paper must seem to
be unanimous. Garrison is point blank the other
way. But his vocation has not been so much to

1 Mr. Gay had written : " I do not know how you feel ahout the
Imprint, but my own opinion is that there had better be either no
name, or only one there. Every one will know that yourself, Mrs.
Chapman and Quincy and Briggs and others contribute to its col
umns. The more we can make believe contribute to it the better,
and to put three or four names in the Imprint will seem to limit
the number. I wish that all its readers shall believe that a vari
ety of people have had a hand in the making up of every number,
and not only those whose names are before them. For the same
reason I wish that the initial system shall be done with. The
readers will be prone to believe the best if they are not certain,
and if there are none of these ' small caps,' as the printers say, to
guide, they may sometimes be humbugged into eating my chaff
for your and others' wheat." Mr. Gay had his way at first, but
before long his readers' curiosity drove him into the use of initials
as signatures.

200 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

feel the pulse of the public as to startle it into a
quicker heat, and if we who make the paper can't
settle it, who shall ? I have one or two suggestions
to make, but shall only hint at them, hoping to see
you at Dedham on the 14th prox? It seems to me
eminently necessary that there should be an entire
concert among us, and that, to this end, we should
meet to exchange thoughts (those of us who are
hereabout) and to wind each other up. We ought
to know what each one's " beat " is, and what each
is going to write.

Then, too, would it not be well to have a Weekly
Pasquil (I do not call it Punch to avoid confu
sion), in which squibs and facetia? of one kind or
other may be garnered up? I am sure I come
across enough comical thoughts in a week to make
up a good share of any such corner, and Briggs and
yourself and Quincy could help.

You will find a squib of mine in this week's
Courier. I wish it to continue anonymous, for I
wish Slavery to think it has as many enemies as
possible. If I may judge from the number of per
sons who have asked me if I wrote it, I have struck
the old hulk of the Public between wind and water.
I suppose you will copy it, and if so I wish you
would correct a misprint or two. . . . Give our
best regards to your wife, and believe me, very
truly your friend,

J. R. LOWELL.

I shall send you a poem next week.1

1 See Letters of James Russell Lowell, i. 111-116. Copyright,
1893, by Harper & Brothers.

IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 201

The " squib " to which Lowell refers in this
letter was the first of the afterward famous " Bi<r-

O

low Papers," introduced by the rustic letter of
Ezekiel Biglow to Mister Eddyter. The poem was
the one beginning

" Thrash away, you '11 kev to rattle
On them kettle-drums o' yourn,"

and the stanzas themselves have the inspiriting
dash and electrifying rat-tat-tat of this new re
cruiting-sergeant in the little army of anti-slavery
reformers. Lowell himself felt that he had sounded
a real summons in these verses, yet singularly
enough it was more than a twelvemonth before he
followed with another in the same vein. The poem
was at once copied into the Standard before the
corrections its author sent could be made, and the
next week appeared the first of Lowell's prose
contributions, a column and a half on Daniel Web
ster, whose intellectual strength made him the
special mark of those men of New England who
wished to turn all the artillery of native make
against the great foe. Whittier's two poems
" Ichabod " and "The Lost Occasion" express
nobly the mingled love, pride, and deep anger with
which the anti-slavery men regarded this strong
nature. " Ichabod " was written after Webster's
speech of 7 March, 1850, and Whittier may well
have carried in his memory a sentence from Lowell's
trenchant unsigned article : " Shall not the Record
ing Angel write Ichabod after the name of this man
in the great book of Doom ? "

For some unexplained reason, though the con-

202 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

nection was now made, for eighteen months after
this editorial article Lowell printed little in the
Standard save an occasional poem. The real con
nection was not made till the spring of 1848. In
the number of the paper for 6 April of that year
it was announced that for the ensuing volume the
Standard would be under the charge of the present
editor, Sydney Howard Gay, but with James Rus
sell Lowell as corresponding editor. His name
appeared thus on the headline of the paper and
continued to keep its place until 31 May, 1849,
when Edmund Quincy's name was bracketed with
it. For a while Mr. Quincy's name took the sec
ond place, but as his contributions increased and
Lowell's diminished, they changed places in order,
and finally Lowell's name, though without any
public announcement, was dropped from the head
line 27 May, 1852, many months after he Jiad
practically ceased to contribute.

The definite arrangement which Lowell made
with the Executive Committee of the American
Anti-Slavery Society, who were the general man
agers of the Standard, was effected in a personal
interview with Mr. Gay, who had come on to Ded-
ham and there met Lowell. The conditions were
simple and are rehearsed in a letter to Briggs,
26 March, 1848. Lowell was to receive a salary
of $500 a year, and for this was to furnish a
weekly contribution, either in verse or prose, but
the verse was not to be restricted to direct attacks
on slavery, and in his prose he now and then went
outside the line of domestic politics, and occasion-

IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 203

ally even took up a distinctly literary topic. " The
Committee," writes Mr. Gay, " accepts your pro
viso of a termination to the arrangement whenever
either party please, and accord to you any reason
able latitude in the choice of subjects that you may
desire." It was plain from the outset that Lowell
was not overconfident of his ability to make the
agreement one of mutual satisfaction. He felt
that in his independence of thought he was not
likely always to be at one with his associates, yet
he was so heartily in accord with them in the fun
damental doctrine of opposition to slavery, morally
and politically, that he was glad of the opportunity
of taking an active part in the fight. And then he
undoubtedly looked to some advantage from the
stimulus he should receive from the necessity of a
weekly contribution. " I did not like," he writes to
Briggs, " to take pay for anti-slavery work, but as
my abolitionism has cut me off from the most pro
fitable sources of my literary emoluments, as the
offer was unsolicited on my part, and as I wanted
the money, I thought I had a right to take it. I
have spent more than my income every year since
I have been married, and that only for necessities.
If I can once get clear, I think I can keep so. I do
not agree with the abolitionists in their disunion and
non-voting theories. They treat ideas as ignorant
persons do cherries. They think them unwholesome
unless they are swallowed stones and all."

The first number of the Standard under this
new arrangement, that for 6 April, 1848, which
contained the announcement, held as Lowell's ini-

204 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

tial contribution his " Ode to France," which no
doubt he had written without regard to this publi
cation, for it bears date " February, 1848," and
indicates that in his study at Elmwood he was
looking out on the large world, and was brooding
over those great general ideas of freedom which
were the intellectual and moral furniture of his
being. He could exclaim : —

" Since first I heard our North-wind blow,
Since first I saw Atlantic throw
On our grim rocks his thunderous snow,

I loved thee, Freedom : as a boy
The rattle of thy shield at Marathon

Did with a Grecian joy

Through all my pulses run :
But I have learned to love thee now
Without the helm upon- thy gleaming brow,

A maiden mild and undefiled,
Like her who bore the world's redeeming child."

And in the next number of the paper he had an
article on " The French Revolution of 1848," in
which he wrote wittily of the flight of the " broker-
king," and exultingly of the triumph of the idea of
the people. " Louis Philippe," he wrote, " extin
guished the last sparks of loyalty in France as
effectually as if that had been the one object of his
eighteen years' reign. He had made monarchy
contemptible. He had been a stock-jobber, a fam
ily match-maker. The French had seen their roy
alty gradually

' melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a Jew.'

During a long and peaceful reign, the king had in
no way contrived to grow on to the people. He

IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 205

was in no sense of the word a Head to them. A
nation can be loyal to a Man, or to the representa
tive of an Idea. Louis Philippe was neither.
When all the Royalty of France can be comforta
bly driven out of it in a street-cab, one would think
the experiment of a Republic might be safely ven
tured upon. To us the late events in Paris seem
less a Revolution, than the quiet opening of a
flower, [which,] before it can blossom, must detrude
the capsule which has hitherto enveloped and com
pressed it." The article disclosed Lowell's eager
faith in the French people as receptive and swift
to appreciate and assimilate an idea. When in the
summer the news came of mob violence, he wrote
again, defending the workmen of Paris, and insist
ing upon it that the social order was to blame.
" The great problem of the over-supply of labor,"
he wrote, " is not to be settled by a decimation of
the laboring class, whether by gunpowder or star
vation. Society in a healthy condition would feel
the loss of every pair of willing and useful hands
thrust violently out of it. That these Parisian
ouvriers were driven to rebellion by desperation is
palpable. That they had ideas in their heads is
plain from their conduct immediately after the
Revolution. They were suffering then'. It was
they who had achieved the victory over the old
order of things. In the then anarchistic state of
the capital, rapine, had that been their object, was
within easy reach. But the revolution of February
was not the chaotic movement of men to whom any
change was preferable to the wretched present.

206 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

Not so much subversion as subversion for the sake
of organization was what they aimed at. The
giant Labor did not merely turn over from one
side to the other for an easier position. Rather he
rose up

' Like blind Orion hungry for the morn.'

It was light which the people demanded. Social
order was precisely the thing they wished for in
the place of social chaos. Government was what
they asked. They had learned by bitter experi
ence that it was on the body of old King Log
Laissez-faire that King Stork perched to devour
them. Let-alone is good policy after you have
once got your perfect system established to let
alone. There is not in all history an instance of
such heroic self-denial as that which was displayed
by what it is the fashion to call the Mob of Paris
during the few days immediately following the
flight of the Orleans dynasty. What was the
shield which the noble Lamartine held up be
tween the Provisional Government and the people ?
Simply the Idea of the Republic ! And this Idea
was respected by starving men with arms in their
hands."

The verses " To Lamartine," also, which ap
peared iri August, illustrate the appeal which
French idealism made to Lowell's mind. It is
not surprising that the year 1848, which seemed
at the time to witness the lifting of the lid from
the Republican pot which was at the boiling point,
should not only have quickened the pulse of lovers
of freedom in America, but should have given

IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 207

generous-minded men here a twinge of envy as
they contrasted the sanguine expectancy of Europe
with what they saw of the seared conscience of
America ; and in the papers just quoted Lowell
turns fiercely upon the public expressions of sym
pathy with the ruling powers of Europe. It was
a natural transition from these reflections on the
movements in France to ask bitterly in his next
editorial article, " Shall we ever be Republicans ? "
In this he speculates on the extraordinary lack of
agreement in the United States between names
and things, and finds slavery the opiate which has
made men's minds drowsy.

"The truth is," he declares, "that we have never
been more than nominal republicans. We have
never got over a certain shamefacedness at the dis-
respectability of our position. We feel as if when
we espoused Liberty we had contracted a mesal
liance. The criticism of the traveller who looks at
us from a monarchical point of view exasperates
us. Instead of minding our own business we have
been pitifully anxious as to what would be thought
of us in Europe. We have had Europe in our
minds fifty times, where we have had God and
conscience once. Our literature has endeavored to
convince Europeans that we are as like them as
circumstances would admit. The men who have
the highest and boldest bearing among us are the
slaveholders. We are anxious to be acknowledged
as one of the great Powers of Christendom, for
getful that all the fleets and navies in the world
are weak in comparison with one sentence in the

208 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

Declaration of Independence. When every other
argument in favor of our infamous Mexican war
has been exhausted, there was this still left — that
it would make us more respected abroad. We are
as afraid of our own principles as a raw recruit of
his musket. As far as the outward machinery of
our government is concerned, we are democratic
only in our predilection for little men.

" When will men learn that the only true con
servatism lies in growth and progress, that what
ever has ceased growing has begun to die ? It is
not the conservative, but the retarding element
which resides in the pocket. It is droll to witness
the fate of this conservatism when the ship of any
state goes to pieces. It lashes itself firmly to the
ponderous anchor it has provided for such an
emergency, cuts all loose, and — goes to the bot
tom. There are a great many things to be done
in this country, but the first is the abolition of
slavery. If it were not so arrant a sin as it is, we
should abolish it (if for no other reason) that it
accustoms our public men to being cowards. We
are astonished, under the present system, when a
Northern representative gets so far as to surmise
that his soul is his own, and make a hero of him
forthwith. But we shall never have that inward
fortunateness without which all outward prosperity
is a cheat and delusion, till we have torn up this
deadly upas, no matter with what dear and sacred
things its pestilential roots may be entwined."

Lowell had said to Briggs that he was not at
one with the Abolitionists who favored disunion,

IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 209

and with that sanity of political judgment which
made it impossible for him to be a revolutionist
even in theory, he saw not in politics and political
institutions that finality which rests in an organic
national life. Thus he never could be a blind par
tisan, and he was quick to see the shams and con
cealments which were hidden in the conventions of
political terms. A clever English publicist once
said that the Constitution forms a sort of false
bottom to American political thinking, and Lowell,
who was as ardent and sensitive an American as
ever lived, played most amusingly in one of the
earliest of these newspaper articles with the conceit
of " The Sacred Parasol." He told Gay afterward
that he wished he had put his paper into rhyme.
If he had, he would doubtless have caught and
held more attention by such a satire. Citing the
marvellous incident reported by Father John de
Peano Carpini of the people in the land of Kergis,
who dwelt under ground because they could not
endure the horrible noise made by the sun when
it rose, he applied the parable to American politics,
only it is the mode of thought that is subterranean,
not the habit of living. " As we manage every
thing by Conventions, we get together and resolve
that the sun has not risen, and so settle the matter,
as far as we are concerned, definitively. Mean
while, the sun of a new political truth got quietly
above the horizon in our Declaration of Independ
ence. Watchers upon the mountain tops had
caught sight of a ray now and then before, but
this was the first time that the heavenly light-

210 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

bringer had gained an objective existence in the
eyes of an entire people." This was all very well,
until the light began to penetrate dark places
which it was for the interest of certain people to
keep dark. " Fears in regard to heliolites became
now very common, and a parasol of some kind was
found necessary as a protection against this celes
tial bombardment. A stout machine of parchment
was accordingly constructed, and, under the re
spectable name of a Constitution, was interposed
wherever there seemed to be danger from the hos
tile incursions of Light. Whenever this is spread,
a dim twilight, more perplexing than absolute
darkness, reigns everywhere beneath its shadow.
... It is amazing what importance anything, how
ever simple, gains by being elevated into a symbol.
Mahomet's green breeches were doubtless in them
selves common things enough and would perhaps
have found an indifferent market in Brattle or
Chatham Street. They might have hung stretched
upon a pole at the door of one of those second
hand repositories without ever finding a customer
or exciting any feeling but of wonder at the un-
couthness of their cut. But lengthen the pole a
little, and so raise the cast-off garment into a ban
ner or symbol, and it becomes at once full of in
spiration, and perhaps makes a Western General
Taylor of the very tailor who cut and stitched it
and had tossed it over carelessly a hundred times.
... In the same way this contrivance of ours,
though the work of our own hands, has acquired a
superstitious potency in our eyes. The vitality of

IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 211

the state has been transferred from the citizens to
this. Were a sacrilegious assault made upon it,
our whole body politic would collapse at once.
Gradually men are beginning to believe that, like
the famous ancile at Rome, it fell down from
heaven, and it is possible that it may have been
brought thence by a distinguished personage who
once made the descent. Meanwhile our Goddess
of Liberty is never allowed to go abroad without
the holy parasol over her head to prevent her from
being tanned, since any darkening of complexion
might be productive of serious inconvenience in
the neighborhood of the Capitol." With this
grave banter Lowell goes on to instance cases
where the Sacred Parasol has caused a shifting of
relations in the twilight created by it, and warns
people of the danger they would be in if exposed
to the direct rays of the Sun of Righteousness.

The article shows the kind of reinforcement
which Lowell brought to the anti-slavery camp.
Edmund Quincy had something of the same wit
and irony, but he had also a greater love of detail
and busied himself over current incidents with the
eagerness of a political detective, running down
fugitives from divine justice with an ardor which
was always heightened by the complexities of the
case. Lowell, though he did not neglect to use in
cidents for the illustration of his argument, never
got far away from the elemental principles for
which his wit and sense of justice and love of free
dom stood. He played with his subject often, but
it was the play of a cat with his captive — one

212 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

stroke of the paw, when the time came, and the
mouse was dead.

Meanwhile the little band of the faithful, for
whom the Anti- Slavery Standard was a weekly
rally, read with delight the incisive editorial arti
cles, and though they were not always supplied
with downright arguments from this source, they
had, what they scarcely got otherwise in the midst
of their tremendous seriousness, the opportunity
to rub their hands with glee over a telling rapier
thrust, and also to have their horizon suddenly en
larged by the historical and literary comparisons
which were swept into range by this active-minded
scout.

The grim earnest in which Mr. Gay was working,
in preparing for this weekly bombardment, left him
little leisure for sitting down and admiring the
mechanism of his guns, and Lowell in his retire
ment at Elmwood was more or less conscious of a
certain doubt whether he was not firing blank car
tridges. " You see," he wrote, " that I have fallen
into the fault which I told you I should be in
danger of, viz., dealing too much in generalities.
The truth is, I see so few papers except what are
on our side that I cannot write a controversial arti
cle. I intend to review Webster's speech and to
write an article on the Presidential nomination.
Perhaps they will be more to the purpose. Mean
while, how can you expect a man to work with any
spirit if he never hears of his employer? Why
don't you write me and say frankly how you are
satisfied or dissatisfied, and what you want ? " Gay

IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 213

wrote later : " You may be sure I shall write you
fast enough when you write what you ought not ;
until I do you may be sure that I — so far as that
is of any consequence — am pleased. I hear your
articles spoken of highly from all quarters, and
have heard only one criticism from one or two
persons, — that they seemed to be written rather
hastily. But that I believe is the way you write
everything. It is a bad way to get into, though,
and newspaper writing is a great temptation to it."
The political doctrines which Lowell advocated
wei'e naturally not those of expediency, but of
downright frankness and honesty. It is true that
he and his associates had the great advantage, in
proclaiming principles, of being quite unable to
carry them out successfully at the polls. Such a
position reenforces candor. Just as the Gold Dem
ocrats in the political contest of 1896 could draw
up the most admirable platform that has been seen
for many years, since they were out in the open,
and were neither on the defensive nor preparing to
carry their candidates into office, so the Abolition
ists in 1848 felt under no obligation to support
either Taylor or Cass, and could speak their minds
freely concerning both. But Lowell, in the arti
cle which he wrote on " The Nominations for the
Presidency," characteristically struck that note of
independence in politics which was a cardinal
point in his political creed and was to be exempli
fied forcibly his life through, both in speech and
conduct. In this he was not illustrating a princi
ple which he maintained, so much as he was living

214 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

a natural life. Independence was a fundamental
note in his nature.

" The word NO," he wrote, "is the shibboleth of
politicians. There is some malformation or de
ficiency in their vocal organs which either prevents
their uttering it at all, or gives it so thick a pro
nunciation as to be unintelligible. A mouth filled
with the national pudding, or watering in the ex
pectation of it, is wholly incompetent to this per
plexing monosyllable. One might imagine that
America had been colonized by a tribe of those
nondescript African animals, the Aye Ayes. As
Pius Ninth has not yet lost his popularity in this
country by issuing a bull against slavery, our youth,
who are always ready to hurrah for anything, might
be practised in the formation of the refractory
negative by being encouraged to shout Viva Pio
Nono.1

" If present indications are to be relied upon,
no very general defection from the ranks of either
party will result from the nominations. Politi
cians, who have so long been accustomed to weigh
the expediency of any measure by its chance of
success, are unable to perceive that there is a kind
of victory in simple resistance. It is a great deal
to conquer only the habit of slavish obedience to
party. The great obstacle is the reluctance of
politicians to assume moral rather than political
grounds." 2

1 A little of this jest is preserved in Parson Wilbur's note to
the second lliglow paper, as published in book form.

2 In his address on " The Place of the Independent in Politics,"

IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 215

It was, after all, a man of letters and not a jour
nalist who was engaged on these weekly diatribes,
and Lowell showed his instinctive sense of literary
art not only in the abundance of allusion and in
the use of such special forms as irony, but even
now and then in the very structure of his essays,
for essays they were rather than editorial articles,
for the most part. Thus, taking his suggestion
in topic from an attempt at running away slaves
from the District of Columbia, he composes an Im
aginary Conversation between Mr. Calhoun, Mr.
Foote, and General Cass. There is an amusing,
faint reflection of Landor in the manner of the
piece, and the three personages are decidedly more
discriminated in character than his old men of
straw, Philip and John, so that the reader really
seems to hear these worthies discoursing together,
and not struggling against the betrayal of the mas
ter of the show, who is shifting his voice from one
to the other. To be sure, no one would mistake
the delicious irony of Lowell's Mr. Foote for the
grave and pious language of the real Mr. Foote,
but the imitation is given with an air of serious
ness. " It is a sentiment of the Bible," Mr. Foote
is made to say, "that riches have the wings of
the morning and fly to the uttermost parts of the
earth. But the South labors under this greater
misfortune, that her property is endowed with legs

delivered forty years later, Lowell pithily says : " A moral pur
pose multiplies us (Independents) by ten, as it multiplied the early
Abolitionists. They emancipated the negro; and we mean to
emancipate the respectable white man."

216 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

of a kind of brute instinct (understanding I will
not call it) to use them in a northerly direction.
It is a crowning mercy that God has taken away
the wings from our wealth. The elder patriarchs
were doubtless deemed unworthy of this providen
tial interference. It was reserved for Christians
and Democrats. The legs we can generally man
age, but it would have been inconvenient to be
continually clipping the wings, not to mention
possible damage to the stock. For these and other
comforts make us duly thankful !

"MR. CASS.

" My friend Louis Philippe — ah, I had forgot
ten : I should have said my late friend.

"MR. CALHOUN.

" The unfortunate are never the friends of the
wise man.

"MR. CASS.

" I was about to say that the Count de Neuilly
has often remarked to me that we were fortunate in
having so conservative an element as ' persons held
to service or labor ' (I believe I do not venture
beyond safe Constitutional ground) mingled in a
just proportion with our otherwise too rapidly pro
gressive institutions. There is no duty of a good
statesman, he said, at once so difficult and so neces
sary as that of keeping steadily behind his age.
But, however much satisfaction a sound politician
who adheres to this theory may reap in the purity

IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 217

of his own conscience, he will find that the dust
incident to such a position will sometimes so choke
him as to prevent his giving an intelligible answer
to the often perplexing questions of his constitu
ents. Yet I know not whether in such exigencies
a cough be not the safest, as it is the readiest reply.
It is an oracle susceptible of any retrospective in
terpretation.

" MR. CALHOTJN".

" A politician who renders himself intelligible
has put a rope round his own neck, and it would
be strange indeed if his opponents should be unable
to find a suitable tree. The present Revolutionary
Government of France has taken many long strides
towards the edge of that precipice which overhangs
social and political chaos, but none longer than in
bringing Government face to face with the people.
That government is the most stable which is the
most complicated and the most expensive. Men
admire most what they do not understand, and
cling tightest to what they have paid or are paying
most for. They love to see money spent liberally
by other people, and have no idea that every time
Uncle Sam unbuttons his pocket, he has previously
put his hand into their own. I have great fears
for France. The Provisional Government talks
too much and too well, — above all things it talks
too clearly. In that wild enthusiasm generated
by the turmoil of great and sudden social changes,
and by contact with the magnetism of excited
masses of men, sentiments are often uttered, which,
however striking and beautiful they might be if

218 JAMES EUSSELL LOWELL

their application were restricted to the Utopias of
poetry, are dangerous in their tendencies and re
sults if once brought into contact with the realities
of life. Despotisms profited more than the Cath
olic Church by shutting up Christ in the sepul
chre of a dead language. A prudent and far-see
ing man will confine his more inspired thoughts to
the solitude of his closet. If once let loose, it is
impossible to recall these winged messengers to
the safer perch of his finger. He may keep an
aviary of angels if he will, but he must be care
ful not to leave the door open. They have an
unaccountable predilection for entering the hut of
the slave, and for seating themselves beside the
hearth of the laborer. Mr. Jefferson,1 by embody
ing some hasty expressions in the Declaration of
Independence, introduced explosive matter into
our system."

And so the conversation goes on touching upon
current topics, all having some bearing on the
great underlying theme. One sees the three men
moving over the ice, cautiously, and not daring to
try its firmness by stamping on it, Mr. Calhoun
alone maintaining a rigidity of posture as if he

1 There is a reference to Jefferson in a letter written ten years
later, which is interesting as one of the rare apprizements by
Lowell of American public men. " I have run through Randall's
Jefferson with the ends of my fingers — a perfect chaos of bi
ography — but enough to confirm me in the belief that Jefferson
•was the first American man. I doubt if we have produced a bet
ter thinker or writer. His style is admirable in general, warmed
with just enough enthusiasm for eloquence, not too much for con
viction." — J. R. L. to C. E. Norton, 11 October, 1858.

IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 219

had satisfied himself that his theory of the probable
thickness of the ice was irrefutable.

Lowell complained to Gay that their position
was so purely destructive as to require them to
look at everything from a point of criticism, and
that this became wearisome. In saying this, he
was thinking probably of the general attitude
which was by necessity taken by a small knot of
political and moral agitators employing their en
gines against a strongly intrenched evil. Criticism,
however, in its more comprehensive sense, was the
weapon which he most naturally used, but he
turned his critical inquiry rather upon men than
upon institutions, or even upon political measures.
In this Imaginary Conversation, for example, the
public men satirized were examined for their mental
and moral characteristics. Through his studies in
literature and history, with his insight as a poet
and man of imagination, and his habit of holding
up before his mind fundamental ideas such as truth
and freedom, Lowell was chiefly interested in the
characters of public men ; in applying his criti
cism to Foote, Cass, Calhoun, Clay, Webster, and
other of his contemporaries, though he was mainly
testing them by their attitude toward slavery, he
was constantly measuring them by great and per
manent standards. The larger the man, the more
thoroughly interested was he in penetrating the
man's words and deeds, and seeking to come at
the bottom facts of his nature.

I have already referred to the early occasion he
took, in his connection with the Standard, to try

220 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

his judgment upon Webster, and it is interesting
to observe tbat no other statesman of the time was
so constantly the subject of his criticism. In com
mon with others, he watched with eagerness the
course of Webster in connection with the Whig
nomination for the presidency in 1848, when the
disappointment of the Massachusetts senator was
so little disguised. " What Will Mr. Webster
Do ? " was the title of the article which he published
in the Standard after General Taylor had been
nominated — that nomination " not fit to be made."
Lowell never had the modern journalist's faculty
for jumping at once into the centre of his subject.
Like his own " musing organist," he is very apt to
" begin doubtfully and far away," but he is also
pretty sure to strike a note at the outset which has,
it turns out, a real relation to the theme he means
to play. Thus in this article he begins with the
reflection : " It is astonishing to see how fond men
are of company. We demand a select society even
upon the fence, and will not jump on this side or
that till we have made as accurate a prospective
census as possible ; " and so on for several para
graphs of acute and amusing variations, noting
especially the disposition to set expediency in the
place of principle, when looking out for the major
ity with whom we wish to side. " After all," he
goes on, " even in estimating expediencies, we are
loath to trust ourselves. We desire rather the
judgment of this or that notable person, and. dare
not so much as write Honesty is the best policy, or
any other prudent morality, till he has set us a

IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 221

copy at the top of the page. In Massachusetts
just now there are we know not how many people
waiting for Mr. Webster's action on the recent
nomination for the Presidency, and no doubt there
is hardly a village in the country which has not its
little coterie of self-dispossessed politicians expect
ing in like manner the moment when the decision
of some person, whose stomach does the thinking
for theirs, shall allow them to take sides.

" ' What will Mr. Webster do ? ' asks Smith.
' Greatest man of the age ! ' says Brown. * Of any
age,' adds Jones triumphantly. Meanwhile the
greatest mind of any age is sulking at Marshfield.
It has had its rattle taken away from it. It has
been told that nominations were not good for it.
It has not been allowed to climb up the back of the
Presidential chair. We have a fancy that a truly
great mind can move the world as well from a three-
legged stool in a garret as from the easiest cushion
in the White House. Where the great mind is,
there is the President's house, whether at Wood's
Hole or Washington.

" We would not be understood as detracting in
the least from Mr. Webster's reputation as a man
of great power. He has hitherto given evidence of
a great force, it seems to us, rather than of a great
intellect. But it is a force working without results.
It is like a steam-engine l which is connected by no
band with the machinery which it ought to turn.
A great intellect leaves behind it something more
than a great reputation. The earth is in some way

1 " A steam-engine in breeches," was Sydney Smith's charac
terization.

222 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

the better for its having taken flesh upon itself.
We cannot find that Mr. Webster has communi
cated an impulse to any of the great ideas which it
is the destiny of the nineteenth century to incar
nate in action. His energies have been absorbed
by Tariff and Constitution and Party — dry bones
into which the touch of no prophet could send
life. . . .

" ' What will Mr. Webster do ? ' This is of more
importance to him than to the great principle which
is beginning to winnow the old parties. This, hav
ing God on its side, can do very well without Mr.
Webster — but can he do as well without it ? The
truth of that principle will not be affected by his
taking one side or the other. But occasio celeris,
and the great man is always the man of the occa
sion. He mounts and guides that mad steed whose
neck is clothed with thunder, and whose fierce ha !
ha! at the sound of the trumpets appals weaker
spirits. Two or three years ago we spoke of one
occasion which Mr. Webster allowed to slip away
from him. That was the annexation of Texas. An
other is offered him now. We do not believe that
party ever got what was meant for mankind. Mr.
Webster has now once more an opportunity of
showing which he was meant for. If party be large
enough to hold him, then mankind can afford to let
him go. Nevertheless, it is sad to imagine him
still grinding for the Philistines. We cannot help
thinking that his first appearance as Samson grasp
ing the pillars of the idol temple would draw a
fuller house than Mr. Van Buren in the same
character. .

IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 223

" Let us concede to Mr. Webster's worshippers
that he has heretofore given proof enough of a great
intellect, and let us demand of him now that he
make use of, perhaps, his last chance to become a
great Man. Of what profit are the hands of a
giant in the picking up of pins ? Let him leave
Banks and Tariffs to more slender fingers. If ever
a man was intended for a shepherd of the people,
Daniel Webster is. The people are fast awaken
ing to great principles : what they want is a great
man to concentrate and intensify their diffuse en
thusiasm. And it is not every sort of greatness that
will serve for the occasion. Webster, if he would
only let himself go, has every qualification for a
popular leader. The use of such a man would be
that of a conductor to gather, from every part of
the cloud of popular indignation, the scattered elec
tricity which would waste itself in heat lightnings,
and grasping it into one huge thunderbolt, let it
fall like the messenger of an angry god among the
triflers in the Capitol.

" Let Mr. Webster give over at last the futile
task of sowing the barren seashore of the present,
and devote himself to the Future, the only legiti
mate seed-field of great minds. Slimmer and glib
ber men will slip through the labyrinth of politics
more easily than he. He will always be outstripped
and outwitted. Politics are in their nature transi
tory. He who writes his name on them, be the
letters never so large, writes it on the sand. The
next wind of shifting opinion puffs it out forever.
It is never too late to do a wise or great action. We

224 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

do not yet wholly despair of hearing the voice of
our Daniel reading the Mene, Mene, written on the
wall of our political fabric."

The Buffalo Convention indorsed the nomination
of Martin Van Buren, by the Barnburners, or anti-
slavery wing of the Democratic party, with the re
sult that the disaffected Whigs came to the support
of General Taylor, and Webster rather tardily
came forward and cast in his influence on that side.
Lowell had been watching for his action, and at
once wrote one of his bantering yet serious articles.

" Mr. Webster," he said, " with the tan of the
Richmond October sun not yet out of his face, is
shocked beyond measure at Mr. Van Buren's
former prc -slavery attitude. Sitting upon the
fence at Marshfield, he tells his neighbors that,
should he and Mr. Van Buren meet upon the same
political platform, they could not look at each
other without laughing. If Mr. Webster's face
looks as black as it is said to have done just after
the Philadelphia nomination, we think it the last
thing in the world that any one would venture
even a smile at. Mr. Webster finds fault with
Mr. Van Buren because Northern Democratic
Senators voted in favor of the annexation of
Texas. But where was Mr. Webster himself? If
he foresaw that Texas would be a Trojan horse,
why did he not say so ? If people would not come
to hear him in Faneuil Hall, could he not have
gathered his friends and neighbors together at
Marshfield, as he did last week? It is perfectly
clear now by actual demonstration, as it was clear

IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 225

then to persons who thought about the matter, that
if Mr. Webster had put himself at the head of the
opposers of annexation, Texas would never have
been annexed, and he would have been the next
President of the United States. The effect of the
Free Soil movement, led by men with not a tithe
of his influence, upon the Compromise Bill, puts
this beyond a question. Where was the Wilmot
Proviso then? At the Springfield Convention a
year ago, Mr. Webster laid claim to this as 'his
thunder.' In the Marshfield speech he dates its
origin as far back as 1787. A precocious Cyclops,
truly, to be forging thunderbolts in his fifth year !
If Mr. Webster should live till 1852, and his retro
spective anti-slavery feeling go on increasing at its
present ratio, he will tell us that he established the
Liberator in 1831."

Quite at the end of Lowell's stated contributions
to the Standard came the longest of his articles in
the form of a running comment on Webster's fate
ful seventh of March speech, and in his comment
he pronounced that judgment which was inevitable
from an anti-slavery prophet. " It has been char
acterized,", he says, " like most of Mr. Webster's
speeches, as a ' masterly effort.' Some of them
have been masterly successes, but this we sincerely
hope and believe ivas an effort. ... It is the plea
of a lawyer and an advocate, but not of a states
man. It is not even the plea of an advocate on
the side which he was retained to argue. We
have heard enough of Democratic defalcations :
here is a great Whig defalcation which dwarfs

226 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

them all, for it is not money which has disap
peared in this instance, but professions, pledges,
principles. Men do not defend themselves in ad
vance against accusations of inconsistency unless
they feel an uncomfortable sense that there is some
justice in the charge. This feeling pervades a
great part of Mr. Webster's speech like a blush."
He uses a fine scorn in dissecting Mr. Webster's
specious plea that slavery is nowhere directly pro
hibited in the teachings of the New Testament,
and quietly asks if incest is anywhere forbidden
there. " But if," he adds, " Mr. Webster were
really in search of a scriptural prohibition of slav
ery, we think he might find it in that command
ment which forbids us to covet anything that is
our neighbor's. For if we may not do that, then
a fortiori we may not covet our neighbor himself.
. . . Mr. Webster, we have said, avoids carefully
all the moral points of the argument. He falls in
with the common assumption that this is a question
of political preponderance between the North and
the South. ... It is not a question between the
North and the South. It is a struggle between the
South (we had almost said Calhoun) and the spirit
of the nineteenth century after Christ. ... Is
slavery the only thing whose sensitiveness is to be
respected ? Freedom has been thought by some
to have her finer feelings also." And he closes
the discussion of the speech in these words : —

" If Mr. Webster's speech should not find any
one to confute it in the Senate, — a hard task, for
assumptions and tergiversations are not easily re-

IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY BANKS 227

plied to, — it will not be without answers abundant
and conclusive. It will be answered by every gen
erous instinct of the human heart, by every prin
ciple which a New Englander has imbibed in the
Church, the Schoolhouse, or the Home, but espe
cially by those inextinguishable sentiments which
move men's hatred of treachery and contempt for
the traitor."

The agreement which Lowell had with the
Standard left him at liberty to send either prose
or poetry, and as his prose had not necessarily a
direct reference to the anti-slavery contest, so his
poetry was to be independent of any polemic con
sideration. It was Lowell the writer whom Gay
wished most to attach to the paper for the added
weight arid influence he would bring, and Lowell
in making and holding to his agreement was not
indifferent to the gentle stimulus which a regular
engagement afforded. He was to send something
on Friday if possible, on Saturday at any rate,
of each week, and when the end of the week came,
a sudden suggestion might turn him away from a
half-finished article to let loose a poem in its place.
The first five " Biglow Papers " were published in
the Courier, the last four in the Standard, where
also appeared, early in the connection, that poem
entitled " Freedom," which holds the essence of
Lowell's thought on this large subject, and is the
best expression of the attitude of his mind as he
entered with a certain sense of special enlistment
upon the direct business of a crusade against slav
ery. The suggestion came from the revolution in

228 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

France which swept Louis Philippe from his
throne, and from that light blaze of revolutionary
fire which for a moment kindled hopes in Germany
and Italy. During this time appeared also several
poems which reflected with varying lights the
thought that stirred in him at the new birth, as
it seemed, with which humanity was travailing.
Such are the apologue of " Ambrose," that grim
poem " The Sower," " Bibliolatres," " A Parable,"
but here also were " Beaver Brook," first called
" The Mill," occasionally a poem like " Eurydice "
which had been lying unprinted in his portfolio,
and a few bits of rhymed satire which were thrown
off by him on the spur of the moment, and were
too careless in manner to be worth his gathering
later into his volumes.

The active members of the anti-slavery society
who controlled the policy of the Standard were
divided in their judgment of the value of Lowell's
contributions. Those who like Mr. Gay himself
were thoroughly in earnest, but held their minds
open on other sides than the north-north-east, re
garded Lowell as an important acquisition. His
fame was growing, and he could have found a ready
market for his wares if he had chosen to turn them
to the best commercial account, but he cheerfully
gave his time and thought to a paper which was
always in an impecunious condition, so that the ed
itor found it hard enough to pay the very moderate
stipend agreed upon. Lowell, as we have seen,
hated to be paid for his services to the anti-slavery
cause, and never complained of the inadequacy of

IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 229

his salary ; but he took a rational view of the
case, and accepted what the paper could give, not
measuring his own contributions by the meagre
standard of his pay. Nor did he show any sensi
tiveness when his work came under editorial stric
ture. The intensity of feeling which possessed the
anti-slavery men who were in the thick of the fight
made them abnormally critical of those who seemed
in any way to hold back, and when Lowell wrote a
long review, with hearty praise, of a new volume of
Whittier's poetry, signing it with his initials, Mr.
Gay did not scruple to prefix an editorial note, in
which he denounced Whittier for his course in
1840, when he refused to follow the lead of those
abolitionists who insisted upon the acceptance of
women delegates at the London convention. The
quarrel then aroused led to a break in the unity
of the anti-slavery group. " Older abolitionists,"
wrote Gay, " cannot forget what Lowell cannot be
aware of, that in the struggle of 1840, which was
a struggle of life and death to the anti-slavery
cause, Whittier the Quaker was found side by side
with the men who would have sacrificed that cause
to crush, according even to their own acknowledg
ment, the right of woman to plead publicly in be
half of the slave." Lowell took the matter quietly
enough : " I could not very well say less, and you
could not say more," was his comment.

Yet how emphatically Mr. Gay valued Lowell's
contributions appears from all the letters of that
anxious and harassed editor. Near the close of
the connection, he wrote to Lowell : " I expected

230 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

much good for the paper when I proposed that you
should lighten my editorial labor, but it has re
ceived, I know, far more benefit than I looked for,
great as that was. The influence of the Standard
— leaving myself out of the question — since it was
established has been very great, and it would also,
I am sure, have been very famous had its aim been
other than it was. No small amount of energy and
intellect have been bestowed upon it, and its nurs
ing fathers and mothers have taken good care of its
being. But of this I am sure, and nobody else is
in a position to know it so well as I — that of all
the good things ever done for it, no one so good
ever was done, as making you its joint editor. Its
influence through you has been felt where it never
was before. Through you it has a reputation which
in all its previous existence it had failed to gain.
A respect and regard is accorded to it because of
your efforts, which no other person ever had, and
no other person probably would ever have gained
for it."

But the Standard was not Mr. Gay's paper to
do with as he would, and there was a section of the
committee in control that was impatient of a con
tributor who was not as they were, fighting away
on foot, with stout oak staves in their hands, but
was flying about as a sort of light-horse contingent,
and sometimes seemed out of sight and yet not in
the enemy's country. " There is a small class,"
Mr. Gay wrote, — " Stephen Foster is a good
representative of it, — who did not consider you
worth much, and many of whom confess they do

IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 231

not understand what you would be at." The por
trait which Lowell had drawn of Stephen Foster
in his letter to Mr. McKiin is likely to help the
reader understand that he might possibly even feel
contempt for Lowell's indirect method of attack
ing slavery.

" Hard by, as calm as summer even,
Smiles the reviled and pelted Stephen,
The unappeasable Boanerges
To all the Churches and the Clergies.

A man with caoutchouc endurance,

A perfect gem for life insurance,

A kind of maddened John the Baptist,

To -whom the harshest word comes aptest,

Who, struck by stone or brick ill-starred,

Hurls back an epithet as hard,

Which, deadlier than stone or brick,

Has a propensity to stick.

His oratory is like the scream

Of the iron-horse's frenzied steam

Which warns the world to leave wide space

For the black engine's swerveless race."

Lowell himself was under no illusions. He was
warmly attached to Gay, and he had a keen in
tellectual admiration for Edmund Quincy. He
respected to the full his several associates, but he
knew well that, though he identified himself cor
dially with the small knot of earnest men and women
who cried aloud and spared not, his temperament,
his ideals, and his humor forbade him to shut
himself up within the bounds they set themselves.
Despite the independence he claimed and that was
granted him, he could not escape the sense of his
restrictions. " I told you and the Executive Com-

232 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

mittee honestly before I began," he wrote Gay,
" that they were setting me about a business for
which I was not fitted. I feel as if the whole of
them were looking over my shoulder whenever I sit
down to write, and it quite paralyzes me." And
yet ten days later he could send his poem, " The
Mill," better known as " Beaver Brook," and write,
" I am just in time for the mail now, and I posi
tively admire myself that I can sit down and write
a poem to the Standard's order so resolutely."

At the end of his first year's engagement Lowell
began to receive intimations that the paper was in
a hard way financially. " I am very sorry to see,"
he writes the editor, " that the Standard is raised
on so insecure a staff. I did not expect, (and so
told the Executive Committee) that my writing for
it would increase the circulation, but, I say again,
as I said before, that they ought to be entirely satis
fied with you. Not only is your own editorial work
done with spirit and vigor, but your selections are
such as to render the paper one of the most inter
esting I see. But they ought to do something
themselves. Phillips and Quincy could do a great
deal if they would. They can't expect two persons
to give the paper an infinite variety, nor me to de
vote myself wholly to it. I have continued to write
after my year was up, but I have had no intimation
from the Committee whether they wished my ser
vices any longer or not. I am very willing to con
tinue, for if I were to give up this engagement, I
must find some other, in order to make the two
onds meet."

IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 233

It then transpired that there had been a warm
discussion in the Committee over the continuance
of the arrangement, and Gay and his friends had
at last effected a compromise by which the salary
of 8500 was to be divided between Lowell and
Quincy, Lowell being required to contribute every
other week only. Lowell accepted the situation
philosophically, and doubtless felt some relief.
" All through the year," he wrote to Gay, " I have
felt that I worked under a disadvantage. I have
missed that inspiration (or call it magnetism)
which flows into one from a thoroughly sympa
thetic audience. Properly speaking, I have never
had it as an author, for I have never been popular.
But then I have never needed it, because I wrote
to please myself and not to please the people :
whereas, in writing for the Standard, I have felt
that I ought in some degree to admit the whole
Executive Committee into my workshop, and defer
as much as possible to the opinion of persons whose
opinion (however valuable on a point of morals)
would not probably weigh a pin with me on an
aesthetic question. I have felt that I ought to
work in my own way, and yet I have also felt that
I ought to try to work in their way, so that I have
failed of working in either. Nevertheless, I think
that the Executive Committee would have found
it hard to get some two or three of the poems I
have furnished from any other quarter." The
entire letter, which is printed by Mr. Norton,1 is
interesting as further defining Lowell's attitude
1 Letters, i. 157, 21 May, 1849.

234 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

toward his associates in the anti-slavery cause, and
his separation from them on some of the crucial
points. But it is clear that the whole situation was
complicated for him by the pecuniary embarrass
ment under which he labored. He was ready, if it
would relieve the situation, to release the Commit
tee altogether, but he was willing to write once a
fortnight if they wished him to do so. " To tell
the truth," he says, " I need money more this year
than last. My father has just resigned a quarter
part of his salary,1 and a large part of the house
hold expenses must devolve upon me. But I have
resolved to turn as much of our land as I can into
money, and invest it, though I confess I should
prefer to leave it as it is, and where I am sure it
would be safe for Mab and the rest."

At the end of his second year the engagement
was ended, though, largely out of friendship for

1 Dr. Lowell's course in this matter was characteristic of his
fine sense of honor. Previous to the ordination of his colleague,
Dr. Bartol, 1 March, 1837, he received from the West Church
Society a salary of S2000 a year. At a meeting of the proprie
tors held 22 April, 1849, a letter was read from Dr. Lowell, in
which he says : " It was always a favorite object with me, in the
event of the settlement of a colleague pastor, to resign the whole
of my salary, or at most, to retain only a small portion of it, that
you might have less hesitation in calling upon me for the services
I might be able to render you." It was with great reluctance, he
added, that he then came to the conclusion it was his duty to ac
cede to the request of the proprietors and retain all the salary he
had been accustomed to receive ; now he could do so no longer,
and he insisted respectfully on an arrangement by which he
should resign a quarter of his salary, " with the purpose at no dis
tant day, if Providence permit, of resigning a further sum." In
1854 Dr. Lowell resigned the whole of his salary, but the Society
declined to accept the proposal.

IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 235

Gay, Lowell contributed occasionally, and his name
indeed was kept at the head of the paper, bracketed
with that of Mr. Quincy, for another year. He
laughed, by the way, at the designation "corre
sponding editor." " It has always seemed to me
to be nonsense. There can, in the nature of the
thing, be no such person as a corresponding edi
tor. Moreover, in this particular case, my unhappy
genius will keep seeing the double sense in the
word corresponding, and suggesting that E. Q. and
I correspond in very few particulars, — meaning no
offence to either of us. ' Contributor ' would be
the fitting word."

The connection with the Standard had not al
tered Lowell's position in politics. It found him
independent, and left him so. He was no less a
reformer at the end than he was at the begin
ning, but he was confirmed in his belief that the
world must be healed by degrees ; and as he was a
disbeliever in the short cut to emancipation by way
of disunion, so he was at once a firm believer in
radical reform, but skeptical of ultimate success
through the rooting out of individual evils. He
found himself among people who were sure of their
panaceas. He himself in the first flush of his rest
less desire for activity had been disposed, under the
influence of the woman he loved, to attack the evil
of intemperance by the method of total abstinence,
but his zeal was short-lived. He appears never to
have accepted woman suffrage as the solution of
the problem of society, and it is doubtful if at any
time he would have given his adhesion to the

236 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

mode of immediate emancipation if he had been
called on to discuss it. His imagination and his
sense of humor both prevented him from being a
thick and thin reformer, and he refused to allow
his hatred of slavery to be complicated with practi
cal measures for the reform of various other evils
which troubled society. It was because he saw in
slavery in the United States the arch foe of free
dom and the insidious corrupter of national life
that he concentrated his reforming energy upon
this evil. He has said of Wordsworth that " for
tunately he gave up politics that he might devote
himself to his own noble calling, to which politics
are subordinate ; " but it might be said with equal
truth of Lowell that he never gave up poetry, and
that when he was writing every week, or every
other week, for the Standard, whether in verse or
in prose, he was dominated by an imagination
which kept steadily before his eyes great princi
ples and doctrines which found in the anti-slavery
movement an illustration but not an exclusive end.
It is not surprising, therefore, that he should have
seemed to others, and sometimes to himself, not to
see the enemy just in front of him.

Nevertheless, the experience was worth much to
him. It resulted, as it might not except for this
stimulus, in the " Biglow Papers," and it also de
monstrated more clearly than ever the supremacy
of the literary function with him, since he never
laid it aside under the strong provocation which his
journalistic work incited, and maintained from first
to last the integrity of his spirit. The conserva-

IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 237

tism which underlay and indeed supported his radi
calism was confirmed by his experience, and it
issued moreover in a large comprehensiveness, so
that he came out of the ranks not only with a
greater sympathy with his comrades,1 but with a
larger toleration for the men he attacked. "At
this minute," he writes to Gay, " the song of the
bobolink comes rippling through my opening win
dow and preaches peace. Two months ago the
same missionary was in his South Carolina pulpit,
and can I think that he chose another text, or
delivered another sermon there ? Hath not a slave
holder hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections,
passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the
same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed
by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same
summer and winter as an abolitionist? If you
pinch them, do they not bleed? If you tickle
them, do they not laugh ? If you poison them, do
they not die ? If you wrong them, shall they not
revenge ? Nay, I will go a step farther, and ask
if all this do not apply to parsons also? Even
they are human."

1 " I do not blame Foster or Philbrick or Jackson for not being
satisfied with me ; but, on the other hand, I thank God that he
has gradually taught me to be quite satisfied with them.'1'1 —
Letters, i. 157.

CHAPTER V

A FABLE FOR CRITICS, THE BIGLOW PAPERS,
AND THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL

1847-1848

IT was while he was most busily engaged in
contributing to the Standard his weekly poems,
criticisms, and editorial articles, that Lowell wrote
and published a group of books, varied in subject
and treatment, dashed off each and all with an
eager abandonment to the intellectual excitement
which produced them, and read by a later genera
tion as capital illustrations not only of their au
thor's spontaneity, but also of the permanent
direction of his nature. It is not unfair to suppose
that the steady application to work in connection
with a cause which appealed to moral enthusiasm
aroused in a mind like Lowell's an exhilaration of
temper very provocative of creation. The poems
which he sent, one after the other, in a continuous
flight, were witnesses to this activity of imagina
tion, and the very tension of his mind kept him in
a state of excitement, so that his diversions took
the form of intellectual amusement. Two or three
numbers of the " Biglow Papers " had appeared,
when Lowell wrote his friend Briggs that he was
at work on a satirical poem, but apparently he did

A FABLE FOR CRITICS 239

not disclose its exact character, though he intimated
at the beginning that he meant to give the poem
to his friend. In point of fact, Lowell appears to
have written at full speed five or six hundred lines
of " A Fable for Critics " in October, 1847, and
then to have been so busily engaged in getting
ready his new volume of " Poems," which appeared
at the end of the year, that he laid it aside. " I
have been waiting with a good deal of impatience,"
Briggs writes, 7 November, 1847, "for the mami-
script of the satirical poem which you promised to
send me. As I have not seen anything advertised
which sounds like you I am half afraid that you
are not going to publish it. But you must be
convinced from the great popularity that Hosea's
efforts have received that the sale of the poem will
be large and profitable."

In his reply, 13 November, Lowell says : " My
satire remains just as it was ; about six hundred
lines I think are written. I left it because I
wished to finish it in one mood of mind, and not to
get that and my serious poems in the new volume
entangled. It is a rambling, disjointed affair, and
I may alter the form of it, but if I can get it read
I know it will take. I intend to give it some serial
title and continue it at intervals. ... I shall send
you my satire in manuscript when it is finished.
Meanwhile, here is a taste and I want your opin
ion. Here is Emerson. I think it good. — There,
I have given you three or four specimen bricks —
what think you of the house? . . . Remember
that my satire is a secret. Read the extract to

240 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

Page." Mr. Briggs was delighted with what was
shown him, and longed for more. " The charac
teristics of Alcott," he says, " I could not judge
of, although they are most happily expressed, as I
have known nothing about him ; but the character
of Emerson was the best thing of the kind I have
read." He returns to the subject on Christmas
day, but is still ignorant of Lowell's intention as
to the disposition of the manuscript. " I think
that the book would be a very popular one, but
still, it strikes me that your subjects are too local
ized to be widely understood ; but they would have
all the merit of fictions at least, and your method
would make them universally acceptable."

But now Lowell gives his friend a more explicit
statement of his intention as to the publication of
his satire. The volume of poems was out of the
way, and on the last day of 1847 he writes as fol
lows : " I have not time left to say much more
than happy New Year ! I have been hard at work
copying my satire that I might get it (what was
finished of it, at least) to you by New Year's day
as a present. As it is, I can only send the first
part. It was all written with one impulse, and
was the work of not a great many hours ; but it
was written in good spirits (con amore, as Leupp
said he used to smoke), and therefore seems to me
to have a hearty and easy swing about it that is
pleasant. But I was interrupted midway by being
obliged to get ready the copy for my volume, and
I have never been able to weld my present mood
upon the old, without making an ugly swelling at
the joint.

A FABLE FOR CRITICS 241

" I wish you to understand that I make you a
New Year's gift, not of the manuscript, but of the
thing itself. I wish you to get it printed (if you
think the sale will warrant it) for your own benefit.
At the same time I am desirous of retaining my
copyright, in order that if circumstances render it
desirable, I may still possess a control over it.
Therefore, if you think it would repay publishing
(I have no doubt of it, or I should not offer it to
you), I wish you would enter the copyright in your
own name and then make a transfer to me ' in con
sideration of etc.'

" Now I know that you are as proud as — you
ought to be, but if the proceeds of the sale would
be of service to you, you have no right to refuse
them. I don't make you a pecuniary present,
though I trust you would not hesitate to accept
one from me, if you needed it, and I could raise
the money, but I give you something which I have
made myself, and made on purpose for you.

" I know nothing about your circumstances. If
beloved W. P. needs it most, let him have it, and
I know that you would consider it the best gift I
could make you. I will not consent to that dis
posal of it, however, unless he need it most. In
case the proceeds amount to anything handsome
(for it may be popular) and you intend them for
"W. P., let it be done in this way, which would
please him and me too, and nobody but myself
would be the gainer. Do you in that case sit to
Page for your portrait — the said effigies to belong
to your humble servant.

242 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

" I am making as particular directions as if I
were drawing my will, but I have a sort of presen
timent (which I never had in regard to anything
else) that this little bit of pleasantry will take.
Perhaps I have said too much of the Centurion.1
But it was only the comicality of his character that
attracted me, — for the man himself personally
never entered my head. But the sketch is clever ?
— I want your opinion on what I have sent imme
diately." 2

Mr. Briggs replied at once, accepting the gift
in the spirit in which it was given, delighting in
the poem, and proposing to arrange immediately
for its publication by Putnam. He was confident,
as was Page, that the book would be a great hit,
and promptly provided for the disposition of the
profits. " One third," he wrote, " should be in
vested for Queen Mab, to be given her on her
eighteenth birthday ; one third to be disposed of
in the same manner for my little angel ; and the
other third to be given to Page, for which he should
paint your portrait for me and mine for you. This
would be making the best disposition of the fund
that I could devise, and I think will not be dis
pleasing to you. If the profits should be small,
I will divide them equally between the little ones.
It will be something quite new for two young ladies
to receive their marriage portions from the profits
of an American poem."

1 Cornelius Matthews.

2 The greater part of this letter will be found in Letters of
James Russell Lowell, i. 120. Copyright by Harper & Brothers,
1893.

A FABLE FOR CRITICS 243

Lowell was highly entertained by this proposal.
" I could not help laughing," he wrote, " as I read
your proposed disposition of the expected finances.
To look at you in the character of Alnaschar was
something so novel as to be quite captivating to
my imagination. Not that I have any fear that
you will kick over the basket, but I am afraid the
contents will hardly be so attractive to the public
as to allow the proceeds of the sale to be divided
into three. It is really quite a triumph to be able
to laugh at my practical friend. However, I will
not impoverish your future, but will let you enjoy
it as long as it lasts. ... I have now, in addition
to what I sent you, and exclusive of Emerson, etc.,
about a hundred lines written, chiefly about Willis
and Longfellow. But in your arrangements with
the printer, you must reckon on allowing me at
least a month. I cannot write unless in the mood."

It was when about half the poem had been writ
ten that Lowell began his constant work for the
Standard, and he was impatient to finish the
poem, yet found it hard to get into the right
mood. " I want to get my windows open," he
wrote to Briggs, 26 March, 1848, " and to write
in the fresh air. I ought not to have sent you any
part of it till I had finished it entirely. I feel a
sense of responsibility which hinders my pen from
running along as it ought in such a theme. I wish
the last half to be as jolly and unconstrained as
the first. If you had not praised what I sent you,
I dare say you would have had the whole of it ere
this. Praise is the only thing that can make me

244 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

feel any doubt of myself." And then, recurring to
Briggs's air castle to be built with the proceeds :
" As to your plan for dividing the profits I will
have nothing to do with it. I wish they might be
a thousand dollars with all my heart, but I do not
see that they will be more than enough to buy
something for my little niece there in New York.
If I had not thought it the only poem I ever wrote
on which there was like to be some immediate
profit, I should never have given it to you at all.
In making it a present to you, I was giving myself
a douceur, and the greater the sale the larger the
bribe to myself. A part of the condition is that if
it make a loss — I pay it. If this be not agreed
to, the bargain is null, and I never will finish it.
. . . Now that I have let you into the secret of
the ' Fable ' before it was finished, I hope you will
write and give me a spur. I suppose you did not
wish to say anything about it till after it became
yours. But I wish to be dunned. Tell me whether
its being published at any particular time will
make any difference, etc., etc., and make any sug
gestions. I think I shall say nothing about Mar
garet Fuller (though she offer so fair a target),
because she has done me an ill-natured turn.1 I
shall revenge myself amply upon her by writing

1 The reference apparently is to Miss Fuller's criticism of
Lowell three years previously, in which she said : " His interest
in the moral questions of the day has supplied the want of vitality
jn himself ; his great facility at versification has enahled him to
fill the ear with a copious stream of pleasant sound. But his verse
is stereotyped : his thoughts sound no depth, and posterity will
not remember him." — Papers on Literature and Art, p. 308.

A FABLE FOR CRITICS 245

better. She is a very foolish, conceited woman,
who has got together a great deal of information,
but not enough knowledge to save her from being
ill-tempered. However, the temptation may be too
strong for me. It certainly would have been if she
had never said anything about me. Even Maria
thinks I ought to give her a line or two." Briggs
begged him not to leave out Miss Fuller, " she will
accuse you of doing it to spite her."

The spring months went by with occasional
dashes at the " Fable " and on 12 May, Lowell
wrote to his friend : " I have begun upon the
' Fable ' again fairly, and am making some head
way. I think with what I sent you (which I be
lieve was about 500 lines) it will make something
over a thousand. I have done since I sent the
first half, Willis, Longfellow, Bryant, Miss Fuller,
and Mrs. Child. In Longfellow's case I have
attempted no characterization. The same (in a
degree) may be said of S. M. F. With her I
have been perfectly good humored, but I have a
fancy that what I say will stick uncomfortably.
It will make you laugh. So will L. M. C. After
S. M. F. I make a short digression on bores in
general which has some drollery in it. Willis I
think good. Bryant is funny, and as far as I could
make it immitigably just. Indeed I have en
deavored to be so in all. I am glad I did B.
before I got your letter.1 The only verses I shall

1 Briggs did not like Bryant, and in this he was abetted by
Page, to whom Bryant at this time was sitting-. Page was angry
because, in the brief notice of Lowell's Poems which Bryant

246 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

add regarding him are some complimentary ones
which I left for a happier mood after I had written
the comic part. I steal from him, indeed ! If he
knew me he would not say so. When I steal I
shall go to a specie vault, not to a till. Does he
think that he invented the past, and has a pre
scriptive title to it ? Do not think I am provoked.
I am simply amused. If he had riled me, I might
have knocked him into a cocked hat in my satire.
But that, on second thoughts, would be no revenge,
for it might make him President, a cocked hat be
ing now the chief qualification.1 It would be more
severe to knock him into the middle of next week,
as that is in the future, and he has such a partial
ity toward the past."

In the passage on bores, which follows the lines
on Margaret Fuller, Lowell explains that —

" These sketches I made (not to be too explicit)
From two honest fellows who made me a visit," —

but he is explicit enough regarding them in the
same letter to Mr. Briggs : " I had a horrible visi
tation the other evening from Mr. , of Phila
delphia, accompanied by Messrs. and , of

Boston. After their departure, I wrote the ' di
gression on bores' which I mentioned above. ,

I believe, likes my poetry, but likes his own too
well to appreciate anybody's else. He is about to
start a magazine and has issued a prospectus of

wrote, he commended only the " Morning1 Glory," which was Mrs.
Lowell's, and because Bryant intimated that Lowell's " To the
Past ." was suggested by a poem of his own with the same title.
1 This was the year of General Taylor's nomination.

A FABLE FOR CRITICS 247

the very most prodigious description. One would
think it to have been written with a quill plucked
from the wing of ' our country's bird.' He wished
to have a portrait and memoir of me in his first
number. I escaped from the more immediate cru
cifixion, however, on the ground that I had no
sketch of myself that would answer his purpose.
As his project may fail after the first number, I may
get off altogether. I have sometimes given offence
by answering such applications with a smile, so I
have changed my tactics, and give assent. ... I
hope to finish the ' Fable ' next week."

On 24 July, Lowell wrote to Gay, who was in
the secret, that he had finished the " Fable," and
shortly after he made a visit to New York, but it
was not till near the end of August that he sent
the last instalment of copy. The proof followed,
and Lowell took occasion to make at least one omis
sion, due apparently to better knowledge which led
him to revise his judgment. He was too late, ap
parently, for another correction, for he wrote to
Briggs, 4 October, asking him to strike out the
four lines relating to Miss Fuller, beginning

" There is one thing she owns in her own single right,"

which still stand. The poem was printed from
type, so that as each sheet was printed, and the
type distributed, it was not possible, as in the case
of electrotype plates, to make corrections up to the
last moment before printing the entire book. In
the same letter he writes : —

" I send half the proof to-day — t' other to-mor-

248 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

row with Irving and Judd. I am druv like all
jjossessed. I am keeping up with the printers
with Wilbur's Notes, Glossary, Index, and Intro
duction. I have two sets of hands to satiate, one
on the body of the book, one on the extremities.

" I wish to see title-page and preface. Also, be
sure and have a written acknowledgment from
G. P. P. that the copyright remains with you.
Then send me a transfer of it for value received.
I will endorse in such a way that it shall remain
to you and yours in case anything happen to me.
Don't think my precaution indelicate. I only wish
to provide against accidents. Let Putnam take
out copyright and let it stand in your name as far
as he and the rest of the world are concerned. I
am anxious about it (I need scarcely say) solely on
these two accounts, — that it may never fall into
strangers' hands, and that it may never be taken
from you. More to-morrow."

Two days later he wrote to Briggs, " I am, you
see, as good as my word and better. For, as I was
copying the other verses this morning, I thought I
might as well throw you in Holmes to boot. Let
the new passage begin thus, —

" Here, ' Forgive me, Apollo,' I cried, ' while I pour ' &c., &c.

Please make the alteration and put in marks of
quotation at the beginning of each new paragraph
if I have omitted them. Also in this line if it runs
as I think it does,

" ' So, compared to you moderns, is old Melesigines,'

insert ' sounds ' instead of ' is.'

A FABLE FOR CRITICS 249

" I wish you would do up a copy with ' author's
and so forths,' dated New York, and put it into
Ticknor's first box directed to Dr. O. W. Holmes,
Boston, and also one directed to Professor Felton,
Cambridge, in Ticknor's or Nichols's as it may
chance. . . .

" Print the title-page thus : —

" ' Header, walk up ' etc., as far as ' ruinous rate '
in large italics in old-fashioned style in an inverted
cone

A

down to Fable for Critics in very large

caps. Then the rest in small caps properly broken
up so as to conceal the fact of the rhyme.1

" You will like the tribute to our Massachusetts.
It is clearly the best passage in the poem, and you
will see how adroitly it comes back to the theme,
the general comic and satiric tone, of the rest."

The date on the rhymed title-page was antici-

1 In a letter to me about the Fable written in 1890, Lowell says :
" Mr. Putnam, I believe, never discovered that the title-page was
in metre, nor that it was in rhyme either. Mr. Norton told me the
other day that he had a copy of some later edition (after Putnam
had changed his place of business), in which the imprint was
' G. P. Putnam, Astor (or something) Place.' I don't remember
whether I knew of it at the time, but had I known, I should have
let it pass as adding to the humor of the book." The first title-
page ended

SET FORTH IN
October, the 31st day, in the year '.£#

G. P. PUTNAM, BROADWAY.

250 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

pated a little, for the book was advertised for 20
October, and delivered on the 25th. A thou
sand copies had been printed from type and were
quickly disposed of. The little book was then
stereotyped and a second edition issued the first of
the New Year, with the new preface which is still
attached to the poem. In February it had gone
to a third edition, but at the end of November,
1849, it had not sold beyond three thousand copies,
though a fourth edition was then talked of. It is
to be feared that Mr. Briggs's golden eggs were
addled.

It will be remembered that in December, 1846,
Lowell wrote the amusing lines to James Miller
McKim, editor of the Pennsylvania Freeman,
which were printed in that paper, and are included
among his collected poems under the heading " Let
ter from Boston." In the same frolicsome temper
used in "A Fable for Critics," Lowell made rapid
sketches of the conspicuous anti-slavery people as
seen at the bazaar just held in Faneuil Hall. The
success of the squib very likely suggested to him
the fun of playing the same game with the literati
of the day. Both poems, indeed, may have taken a
hint from Leigh Hunt's " The Feast of the Poets," 1
which had been brought afresh to Lowell's notice,
if not disclosed to him for the first time, by the
little volume " Rimini and other Poems by Leigh
Hunt," issued by Ticknor in 1844. The measure
is the same. Phoebus Apollo also introduces the

1 Hunt's poem again doubtless owed its being1 to Lord Byron's
English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.

A FABLE FOR CRITICS 251

poets, though Hunt's scheme is more deliberate
than Lowell's, and there is the same disposition to
make use of unexpected rhymes. Hunt used his
sauciness upon his contemporaries, Spencer, Rog
ers, Montgomery, Crabbe, Hayley, Gifford, Scott,
Campbell, Moore, Southey, Coleridge, Wordsworth,
Landor, and Rose. The reader can easily pick out
the names here which have well outlived Hunt's
mockery, and those which were as well known to
Hunt's contemporaries as are some in the " Fable "
to Lowell's. Hunt, to be sure, confined himself to
poets and poetasters, while Lowell drew his exam
ples from the more conspicuous writers in the
United States, whether of prose or of verse.

There was little mystery about the authorship of
the " Fable." Lowell did not put his name on the
title-page, but he wrote himself all over the book ;
and though the publication was anonymous, he
made no objection to the disclosure to Putnam, and
apparently was careless about confining the know
ledge to Briggs, Gay, and Page. Longfellow re
cords in his diary under 15 June, 1848, " Passed
an hour or two with Lowell, who read to me his
satire on American authors ; full of fun, and with
very true portraits, as seen from that side." It
does not appear if Lowell read to his guest what he
had recently written about him in the satire. And
Dr. Holmes, to whom a copy of the book, as we
have seen, was sent with the " author's and so
forths," acknowledged it in a letter to Lowell, in
which he characterizes it as " capital — crammed
full and rammed down hard — powder (lots of it)

252 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

— shot — slugs — bullets — very little wadding,
and that is gun-cotton — all crowded into a rusty
looking blunderbuss barrel as it were, — capped
with a percussion preface, — and cocked with a
title-page as apropos as a wink to a joke." 1

Clever as are the portraits, — some of the lines
are bitten in with a little acid, — and though there
are but few of the authors characterized who have
not even a more secure place to-day than then, the
" Fable " can scarcely be said ever to have had or
retained much vogue as a whole. In the excite
ment of writing his crackling lines Lowell believed
himself to be making a hit, but hardly had the ink
dried than he saw it for what it was, intellectual
effervescence that made one hilarious for the mo
ment. " It seems bald and poor enough now, the
Lord knows," he wrote between the first and sec
ond editions. Forty years afterward, however, on

1 Morse's Life and Letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes, ii. 107. In
an unfinished letter to Dr. Holmes written from Madrid in 1878,
Lowell refers to a recent criticism of Holmes's poems, in which the
characterization in the Fable was quoted. " I thought the young
fellow who wrote it had some sense, especially as he quoted some
thing I said of you in my impudence thirty years ago. It is an
awful thought, but these who then were passing out of the bald
ness of infancy are now entering upon that of middle age, and here
we both are as if nothing had happened. And probably precious
little has happened, — I mean of any great account. The more
one reads of history the more one sees mankind doing the same
foolish things over again with admirable gravity and then con
templating themselves with the satisfaction of Jack Horner. I re
member when I was writing the Fable for Critics and used to walk
up and down the front walk at Elmwood, I paused to watch the
ant-hills, and in the seemingly aimless and yet ceaseless activity of
their citizens thought I saw a very close paraphrase of the life of
men."

A FABLE FOR CRITICS 253

recalling it, he said it was the first popular thing
he had written. He never was quite easy as to his
treatment of Bryant : " I am quite sensible now,"
he wrote in 1855, " that I did not do Mr. Bryant
justice in the ' Fable.' But there was no personal
feeling in what I said, though I have regretted '•
what I did say because it might seem personal."
And as late as 1887 he characterized his poem
written for Bryant's birthday as a kind of palinode
to what he had said of him in the " Fable," "which
has something of youth's infallibility in it, or at
any rate of youth's irresponsibility." Aside from
this slight uneasiness, Lowell does not appear to
have repented of any of his judgments, nor did he
ever revise the poem for subsequent editions. No
doubt, the disregard of the poem has been due
largely to the ephemeral nature of much of the jo-
coseness. The puns, good and bad, with which it
is sprinkled, are so many notices of " good for this
time only," and the petty personalities and triv
ial bits of satire lower the average of the whole.
The " Fable " must be taken for just what it was to
the author and his friends, a piece. of high spirits
with which to make sport : the salt that savors it is
to be found in the few masterly characterizations
and criticisms.

And yet, turning away from this Jew d 'esprit as
a piece of literature, and looking at it as a reflec
tion of Lowell's mind in a very ardent passage of
his life, we may justly regard with strong interest
so frank an expression, not merely of his likes and
dislikes, but of the underlying principle of criticism

254 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

which was native to him and found abundant illus
tration from the days of the Pioneer to the later
days of the North American Review. His impa
tience of yard-stick criticism and of a timid waiting
upon foreign judgment, so hotly uttered in his rapid
lines, sprang from the intuitive perception and the
independence of spirit which lie at the basis of all
his own criticism. This intuitive perception was
indeed that of a man who often formed hasty im
pressions and was not without personal prejudice,
but it was at least a first-hand judgment, and not
the composite result of other men's opinions, and
it came from a mind through which the wind of a
free nature was always blowing. The lightning
flashes which disclose the inherent and lasting qual
ities of Emerson, Hawthorne, Cooper, Holmes,
Whittier, Bryant, Longfellow are all witnesses to
the penetration and clear intelligence which Lowell
possessed. It must not be forgotten that Lowell,
himself only just past the period of youth, was writ
ing of men whose reputation is secure enough now,
but who were at that time not wholly discriminated
by the general public from a number of mediocri
ties who crowded about them, and there is an even-
handed justice in the poem which not unfitly is put
into the mouth of that court of last resort, Pho3bus
Apollo himself.

The independence which goes along with the in
tuition is simply the integrity of a nature which is
not given to the concealment of its judgments. As
he laughingly said of himself later, he was very
cock-sure of himself at this time. In after years,

THE BIGLOW PAPERS 255

when he was speaking in his own voice from a more
historic platform, he might choose his phrases more
deliberately, but none the less did he speak his
mind out. There was confidence in himself first
and last, but the impetuous, almost reckless utter
ance of his youth, when he saw things clearly as
youth does when it is conscious of breathing the air
of freedom and bathing in the light of truth, yielded
only to the temper which maturity brings and was
more moderate and charitable in expression because
it had the larger vision. When one considers the
eagerness with which Lowell vented himself in the
months of his close connection with the Anti-Slav
ery Standard, one is not surprised that in a book
which is at once a defence of criticism and a swift
survey of the whole field of American letters as it
lay under the eye of this knight-errant of freedom
and truth, Lowell should have displayed, with lit
tle reserve, the frankness and impetuosity of his
nature. It is only after a closer inspection that
one discovers also how sound and how generous is
his judgment.

How much satire gains from moral earnestness
and a righteous scorn is easily seen in the book
which followed close on the heels of " A Fable for
Critics," and with its pungency weakened the im
pression which might otherwise have been created
by its companion in literature. "We have already
seen that the first number of the " Biglow Papers "
appeared in the Courier of Boston in June, 1846,
and that Lowell reckoned on producing a greater

256 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

effect by withholding his name. He told Gay that
he might very likely continue to fire from this
masked battery while he was openly keeping up
with others a fusillade in the Standard. In point
of fact the first five numbers were printed in the
Courier, but when the fifth was printed, Lowell
was at the beginning of his real connection with
the Standard, and the remaining four were printed
in that paper.

The series, thus begun in the Courier in June,
1846, was closed in the Standard in September,
1848.1 Although Lowell did not sign his name to
any of the numbers either in the Courier or in the
Standard, the authorship was a very open secret
indeed. Still, he had the pleasure which sprang
from the dramatic assumption, and he took good
care not to confuse the personalities in the little
comedy, by thrusting his own real figure on the
stage. As he wrote forty years later : " I had
great fun out of it. I have often wished that I
could have had a literary nom de plume and kept
my own to myself. I shouldn't have cared a
doit what happened to him."

A dozen years later, on the eve of the war for
the Union, Mr. Hughes, who was introducing the
book to the English public, wanted Lowell to write
an historical introduction. In declining to do this,2

1 The Bibliographical Note in the Appendix gives the dates of
the successive numbers. See Appendix C.

2 When he was supervising the final Riverside edition of his
writings, he gladly accepted the services of a graduate student at
Harvard, now Professor of Law in Western Reserve University,
Mr. Frank Beverly Williams, who prepared a series of notes.

THE BIGLOW PAPERS 257

he gave a brief and clear statement of his political
position at the time of writing the "Biglow
Papers." "I believed our war with Mexico
(though we had as just ground for it as a strong
nation ever has against a weak one) to be essen
tially a war of false pretences, and that it would
result in widening the boundaries and so prolong
ing the life of slavery. Believing that it is the
manifest destiny of the English race to occupy
this whole continent, and to display there that
practical understanding in matters of government
and colonization which no other race has given
such proof of possessing since the Romans, I hated
to see a noble hope evaporated into a lying phrase
to sweeten the foul breath of demagogues. Leav
ing the sin of it to God, I believed and still believe
that slavery is the Achilles heel of our polity:
that it is a temporary and false supremacy of the
white races, sure to destroy that supremacy at last,
because an enslaved people always prove them
selves of more enduring fibre than their enslavers,
as not suffering from the social vices sure to be
engendered by oppression in the governing class.
Against these and many other things I thought all
honest men should protest. I was born and bred
in the country, and the dialect was homely to me.
I tried my first ' Biglow Paper ' in a newspaper
and found that it had a great run. So I wrote the
others from time to time during the year which
followed, always very rapidly, and sometimes (as
with ' What Mr. Robinson thinks ') at one sitting."
The cleverness of the refrain in this last named

258 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

poem started it on a hilarious career, and it is per
haps only in one of Gilbert's topical songs that we
can match the success of a collocation of words,
where the quaintness of turn keeps a barren phrase
perennially amusing. It was with an echo of it in
his mind no doubt that when he had just done
reading the proofs of the entire volume, Lowell
snapped his whip in like fashion in a poem for the
Standard, which he never reprinted, but which is
interesting from the diversity shown in the hand
ling of a single theme.

In the fall of 1848, Harrison Gray Otis, writ
ing in advocacy of the election of Zachary Taylor,
referred to an incident in 1831, when, as Mayor
of Boston, he answered an application from the
Governors of Virginia and Georgia for information
respecting the persons responsible for The Liber
ator. " Some time afterward," he says, " it was
reported to me by the city officers that they had
ferreted out the paper and its editor : that his office
was an obscure hole, his only visible auxiliary a
negro boy, and his supporters a very few insignifi
cant persons of all colors." -Lowell saw the letter
in one of the newspapers of the day, clipped out
this sentence, pasted it on a sheet of paper, and
wrote below it, with the title " the day of small
things," the notable lines which in his collected
poems bear the heading " To W. L. Garrison."
The poem was published in the Standard, 19 Oc
tober, 1848, but the incident evidently made a
strong impression on him, especially when he con
sidered what had taken place in seventeen years;

THE BIGLOW PAPERS 259

for immediately afterward he wrote again, and in
the number for 26 October, appeared

THE EX-MAYOR'S CRUMB OF CONSOLATION.

A PATHETIC BALLAD.1

" Two Governors once a letter writ
To the Mayor of a distant city,
And told him a paper was published in it,
That was telling the truth, and 't was therefore fit
That the same should be crushed as dead as a nit
By an Aldermanic Committee :
' Don't say so ? ' says Otis,
' I '11 enquire if so 't is :
Dreadful ! telling the truth ? What a pity !

" ' It can't be the Atlas, that 's perfectly clear,

And of course it is n't the Advertiser,
'T is out of the Transcript's appropriate sphere,
The Post is above suspicion : oh dear,
To think of such accidents happening here !
I hoped that our people were wiser.
While we 're going,' says Otis,
' Faustissimis votis,
How very annoying such flies are ! '

" So, without more ado, he enquired all round

Among people of wealth and standing ;
But wealth looked scornful, and standing frowned ;
At last in a garret with smoke imbrowned,
The conspirators all together he found, —
One man with a colored boy banding ;
' Ton my word,' says Otis,
' Decidedly low 't is,'
As he groped for the stairs on the landing.

" So he wrote to the Governors back agen,

And told them 't was something unworthy of mention ;

1 Mr. Otis died October 28. " Only think of H. G. 0 1 " wrote
Lowell to Gay early in November; " I would not have squibbed
Him if I had known he was sick, but I never hear anything."

260 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

That 't was only a single man -with a pen,
And a font of type in a sort of den,
A person unknown to Aldermen,
And, of course, beneath attention ;
' And therefore,' wrote Otis,

Annuentibus totis,
' There 's no reason for apprehension.'

" But one man with a pen is a terrible thing,

With a head and heart behind it,
And this one man's words had an ominous ring,
That somehow in people's ears would cling1 ; —
' But the mob 's uncorrupted : they 've eggs to fling;
So 't is hardly worth while to mind it ;
As for freedom,' says Otis,
' I 've given her notice
To leave town, in writing, and underlined it.'

" But the one man's helper grew into a sect,

That laughed at all efforts to check or scare it,
Old parties before it were scattered and wrecked,
And respectable folks knew not what to expect ; —
' 'T is some consolation, at least to reflect
And will help us, I think, to bear it,
That all this,' says Otis,
' Though by no means in votis,
Began with one man and a boy in a garret.' "

Lowell himself, in the Introduction which he
wrote to the Second Series, bears witness to the
popularity of the " Biglow Papers " while they
were still uncollected. " Very far," he says, " from
being a popular author under my own name, so
far indeed as to be almost unread, I found the
verses of my pseudonym copied everywhere : I saw
them pinned up in workshops : I heard them
quoted and their authorship debated." It was, it
may be said, no new thing to seek to arrest the
public attention with the vernacular applied to

THE BIGLOW PAPERS 261

public affairs. Major Jack Downing and Sam
Slick had been notable exemplars, and they had
many imitators ; but party politics, or even local
characteristics, may give rise to the merely idle jest
of satire ; the reader who laughed over the racy
narrative of the unlettered Ezekiel, and then took
up Hosea's poem and caught the gust of Yankee
wrath and humor blown fresh in his face, knew
that he was in with the appearance of something
new in American literature.

After the first heat, Lowell began to distrust
his mode a little. " As for Hosea," he writes to
Briggs, " I am sorry that I began by making him
such a detestable speller. There is no fun in bad
spelling of itself, but only where the misspelling
suggests something else which is droll per se. You
see I am getting him out of it gradually. I mean
to altogether. Parson Wilbur is about to propose
a subscription for fitting him for college, and has
already commenced his education." 1 He dropped
this intention, however, and the later numbers of
the series show no marked departure from the
general scheme of Yankee spelling. There is no
doubt, though, that when it came to a revision of
the papers for final book publication, Lowell did
make an attempt to introduce some sort of con
sistency or effectiveness in the form. He groaned
over the labor involved, and confessed that he

1 Writing forty years later in excuse of a petty solecism, he
said : " I think it must have been written when I was fresh from
the last Hi glow Papers. When my soul enters Mr. Biglow's per
son, she divests herself for the time of all conventional speech,
and for some time after she leaves it is apt to forget herself. "

262 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

made a great many alterations in spelling even
after the pages had been stereotyped. " It is the
hardest book to print," he wrote Mr. Gay, " that
ever I had anything to do with, and, what with
corrections and Mr. Wilbur's annotations, keeps
me more employed than I care to be."

The labor was partly of his own making, but
after all was consequent chiefly upon the sense of
art which led the author to do much more than
simply collect and reprint what he had written
currente calamo in the Courier and Standard.
The great popularity attained by the successive
numbers showed him that he had hit the mark,
but also the conception of the whole grew in his
mind, and he seized the opportunity which reprint
ing afforded, to shape his satire and give it a
body, by filling out the characters who constituted
his dramatis persona?,. " When I came to col
lect [the papers] and publish them in a volume,"
he wrote in 1859 to Mr. Hughes, in the letter al
ready quoted, " I conceived my parson-editor with
his pedantry and verbosity, his amiable vanity
and superiority to the verses he was editing, as a
fitting artistic background and foil. It gave me
the chance, too, of glancing obliquely at many
things which were beyond the horizon of my other
characters. I was told afterwards that my Parson
Wilbur was only Jedediah Cleishbotham over
again, and I dare say it may be so ; but I drew
him from the life as well as I could, and for the
authentic reasons I have mentioned."

There was a slight undercurrent of reference

THE BIGLOW PAPERS 263

to his own father in this characterization. " My
father," he wrote Hughes, " was as proud of his
pedigree as a Talbot or Stanley could be, and Par
son Wilbur's genealogical mania was a private
joke between us." *

So thoroughly did he think himself into the
artistic conception of the book that he even pro
posed at one time to put Jaalani on the title-page
as place of publication, and to have it " printed
on brownish paper with those little head and tail
pieces which used to adorn our earlier publications
— such as hives, scrolls, urns, and the like." This
external fitness he did not secure, but he elabo
rated a system of notes, glossary, and index, let
ting the fun lurk in every part, and completed the
effect by the notices of an independent press, which
must have made the actual writers of book notices
hesitate a little before they dropped into their cus
tomary machine-made manner when treating of this
special work. The burlesque of Carlyle in one of
these is especially clever. In supplying all this
apparatus he drew a little on his prose papers in

1 He had the ill luck which not infrequently attends the writers
of fiction, to make use of an actual name in one of his inventions,
and received this protest from the Itev. H. Wilbur : —

" Unknown Sir, I helieve there is no other clergyman in New
England besides myself of the same name you sometimes asso
ciate with your writings. Perhaps with the scintillations of your
genius rny name would be more likely to descend to posterity
than from writings or labours of my own. But if your edification
could be as well promoted under the ministry of Parson Smith or
some fictitious name not likely to be associated with individuality
as with the old Parson you will much oblige yours very respect
fully."

264 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

the Standard, but it is doubtful if most readers
get beyond the verse, or do more than glance at
the drollery which lies perdu in the prose equip
ment, so much swifter is the flight of the arrows of
satire when they are barbed with rhyme.

The success of the book was immediate. The
first edition of 1500 was gone in a week, and the
author could say with satisfaction that " the book
was actually out of print before a second edition
could be struck off from the plates." In later
years the book was apt to fill him with a kind of
amused astonishment. The unstinted praise which
Hughes gave to the " Biglow Papers," quotations
from which were always on his tongue's end, drew
from Lowell the expression : " I was astonished to
find what a heap of wisdom was accumulated in
those admirable volumes." It is not strange that,
in looking back from the tranquil temper of older
years, Lowell should be struck with the high spirits,
the tension of feeling, and the abandon of utterance
which characterize this work ; but when he was in
the thick of the fight a second time he was more
impressed by the moral earnestness which underlay
all this free lancing. " The success of my experi
ment," he wrote, in the Introduction to the Second
Series, " soon began not only to astonish me, but
to make me feel the responsibility of knowing that
I held in my hand a weapon instead of the mere
fencing stick I had supposed. ... If I put on the
cap and bells, and made myself one of the court
fools of King Demos, it was less to make his Ma
jesty laugh than to win a passage to his royal ears

THE BIGLOW PAPERS 265

for certain serious things which I had deeply at
heart."

The force which Lowell displayed in this satire
made his book at once a powerful ally of a senti
ment which heretofore had been crassly ridiculed ;
it turned the tables and put Anti-slavery, which had
been fighting sturdily on foot with pikes, into the
saddle, and gave it a flashing sabre. For Lowell
himself it won an accolade from King Demos. He
rose up a knight, and thenceforth possessed a free
dom which was a freedom of nature, not a simple
badge of service in a single cause. His patriotism
and moral fervor found other vents in later life, and
he never sheathed the sword which he had drawn
from the scabbard ; but it is significant of the sta
bility of his genius that he was not misled into a
limitation of his powers by the sudden distinction
which came to him. For, though we naturally
think first of the political significance of the "Big-
low Papers," the book, in its fullest meaning, is an
expression of Lowell's personality, and has in it
the essence of New England. The character of the
race from which its author sprang is preserved in
its vernacular and in the characters of the drama
tis persona}. Not unwittingly, but in the full con
sciousness of his own inheritance, Lowell became
the spokesman of a racy people, whose moral force
had a certain acrid quality, and, when thrown to
the winds, as in the person of Birdofredom Sawin,
was replaced by an insolent shrewdness. Nor is
the exemplification of New England less complete
for that infusion of homely sentiment and genuine

266 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

poetic sensibility which underlie and penetrate the
sturdy moral force.

The " Biglow Papers " threw " A Fable for
Critics " into the shade. It was nearly through
the press when the " Fable " was published, and
Briggs, who kept a close watch of his friend's pro
duction, wrote : " I am pretty confident that the
'Fable' will suit the market for which it is in
tended, unless it should be killed by Hosea, who
will help to divert public attention from his own
kind." It is to be suspected that Lowell himself
felt the strong contrast which lay in the two works
when he was driving them through the press side
by side, and rather lost interest in the ebullition
of an hour, as he threw himself with an almost
exhausted energy into a book which carried at its
heart a flame of passionate scorn. The only pas
sage in " A Fable for Critics " which he dwelt upon
with genuine delight was his apostrophe to Massa
chusetts, and that is almost out of key with the rest
of the poem. But a third book was shortly to fol
low and to divide with the other two the popularity
which fell to Lowell as a writer.

It does not appear just when " The Vision of Sir
Launfal " was written, but in a letter to Briggs,
dated 1 February, 1848, Lowell speaks of it as " a
sort of story, and more likely to be popular than
what I write generally. Maria thinks very highly
of it. 1 shall probably publish it by itself next
summer." But it was not till the " Biglow Papers "
were off his hands that Lowell took steps to print

THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 267

the book, which was published 17 December, 1848.
It was not long after that he went to Watertown
for the wedding of Mrs. Lowell's sister with Dr.
Estes Howe, and the next day he wrote to Briggs :
" I walked to Watertown over the snow with the
new moon before me and a sky exactly like that in
Page's evening landscape. Orion was rising be
hind me, and as I stood on the hill just before you
enter the village, the stillness of the fields around
me was delicious, broken only by the tinkle of a lit
tle brook which runs too swiftly for Frost to catch
it. My picture of the brook in ' Sir Launf al '
was drawn from it. But why do I send you this
description — like the bones of a chicken I had
picked ? Simply because I was so happy as I
stood there, and felt so sure of doing something
that would justify my friends. But why do I not
say that I have done something ? I believe I have
done better than the world knows yet, but the past
seems so little compared with the future." And
then referring to a recent notice of him which in
timated that he was well to do, he says : " I wish I
might be for a day or two. I should like such an
income as Billy Lee desired, who, when some one
asked his idea of a competence, replied, 'A million
a minute, and your expenses paid ! ' But I am
richer than he thinks for. I am the first poet who
has endeavored to express the American Idea, and
I shall be popular by and by. Only I suppose I
must be dead first. But I do not want anything
more than I have."

It is not very likely that Lowell was thinking

268 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

specifically of " Sir Launfal " when he wrote this.
It is more likely that he would have named " Pro
metheus," " Columbus," or " Freedom " if he had
been asked to name names ; and yet it is not strain
ing language too far to say that when he took up an
Arthurian story he had a different attitude toward
the whole cycle of legends from that of Tennyson
who, a half dozen years before, had begun to revive
the legends for the pleasure of English-reading
people. The exuberance of the poet as he carols of
June in the prelude to Part First is an expression
of the joyous spring which was in the veins of the
young American, glad in the sense of freedom and
hope. As Tennyson threw into his retelling of
Arthurian romance a moral sense, so Lowell, also
a moralist in his poetic apprehension, made a par
able of his tale, and, in the broadest interpretation
of democracy, sang of the levelling of all ranks in
a common divine humanity. There is a subterra
nean passage connecting the " Biglow Papers " with
" Sir Launfal " ; it is the holy zeal which attacks
slavery issuing in this fable of a beautiful charity,
Christ in the guise of a beggar.

The invention is a very simple one, and appears
to have been suggested by Tennyson's " Sir Gala
had," but the verses in the poem which linger long
est in the mind are not those connected with the
fable, but rather the full-throated burst of song in
praise of June. Indeed, one might seriously main
tain from Lowell's verse that there was an especial
affinity which he held with this month. Witness
the joyous rush of pleasure with which " Under

THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 269

the Willows " 1 is begun, and the light-heartedness
with which Hosea Biglow leaves the half-catalogue
manner rehearsing the movement of Spring in
" Sunthin' in the Pastoral Line," and leaps al
most vociferously into the warm, generous air of
June, when " all comes crowdin' in." The poem
entitled "Al Fresco" is but a variation on the
same theme ; when he first published it, save the
opening stanza, in the Anti- Slavery Standard, he
gave it the title of " A Day in June." And when,
compelled to lie indoors, he found a compensation
in Calderon singing to him like a nightingale, it
was still a wistful look he cast on his catbird that
joined with the oriole and the cuckoo to call him
out of doors, and he sighed to think that he could
not like them be a pipe for June to play on. " The
Nightingale in the Study " was written when he
sought in illness for something that would seclude
him from himself; but the three poems of 1848
were the outcome of a nature so tingling with vital
ity that expression was its necessity, and sponta
neity the law of its being. Literature, freedom,
and nature in turn appealed to the young enthu
siast ; the visions he saw stirred him, in the quiet
of Elmwood, to eager, impetuous delivery ; and his
natural voice was a singing one.

1 He intended first to call this " A June Idyll."

CHAPTER VI

SIX YEARS
1845-1851

WHEN, in the spring of 1845, the Lowells re
turned to Cambridge from Philadelphia, where they
had spent the first four months of their married
life, it was to share the family home of Elmwood
for the next six years. Lowell's father retired in
the summer of 1845 from active charge of the West
Parish in Boston, but retained his interest in vari
ous societies which gave him partial occupation,
leaving him leisure for the indulgence of his taste
for reading and for the pleasures of gardening and
small farming. His mother, whose malady slowly
but steadily increased, was under watchful care.
She was taken to various health resorts in hopes of
recovery, and spent a part of her last years under
more constant treatment at an asylum for the men
tally deranged. Miss Rebecca Lowell had charge
•of the little household, and now and then went on
journeys with her father or mother or both, leaving
the young couple to themselves. As one child after
another came into the circle, the grandfather found
a solace for the sorrow which lay heavily upon him,
and his letters, when he was on one of his jour
neys, were filled with affectionate messages for his

SIX YEARS 271

new daughter and her children, mingled with care
ful charges to his son concerning the well-being of
the cattle, small and large, and the proper harvest
ing of the little crops.

Mrs. Lowell's family lived near by in Water-
town, and one by one her sisters married, one of
them coming to Cambridge to live. The society
of the college town was open, and it was in these
early years that Lowell formed one of a whist
club, which, with but slight variation in member
ship, continued its meetings to the end of his life,
and the simple records of which were kept by
Lowell. Its most constant members were Mr^
John Holmes, a younger brother of Dr. Oliver
Wendell Holmes, Mr. John Bartlett, who was for
a while a bookseller in Cambridge, and afterward
until his retirement a member of the publishing
firm of Little, Brown & Co. of Boston, and best
known by his handbook of " Familiar Quotations "
and his elaborate " Concordance to Shakespeare,"
and finally Dr. Estes Howe, who married Mrs.
Lowell's sister.

Lowell was much given to concealing in his
verse or prose little allusions which might be
passed over by readers unaware of what lay be
neath, but would be taken as a whispered aside by
his friends. Thus in a " Preliminary Note to the
Second Edition" of "A Fable for Critics," he
says : " I can walk with the Doctor, get facts from
the Don, or draw out the Lambish quintessence of
John, and feel nothing more than a half comic
sorrow, to think that they all1 will be lying to-

1 That is, the hostile criticisms of his book.

272 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

morrow tossed carelessly up on the waste-paper
shelves, and forgotten by all but their half dozen
selves."

In the summer of 1846 the sickness of little
Blanche took the family suddenly to Stockbridge
in the Berkshire Hills, whence Lowell wrote to
Carter : " Stockbridge is without exception the
quietest place I was ever in, and the office of
postmaster here one of the most congenial to my
taste and habits of any«I ever saw or heard of.
The postmaster has no regular hours whatever.
Even if engaged in sorting the mail, he will run
out and lock the door behind him, to play with
his grandchildren. I do not believe that in the
cabinet of any postmaster-general there is a more
unique specimen. He is a gray-bearded old gentle
man of between sixty and seventy, wears the loose
calico gown so much in vogue among the country
clergy, and feels continually that he is an impor
tant limb of the great body politic. I do not mean
that he is vain. There is too profound a respon
sibility attached to his office to allow of so light
and unworthy a passion. There is a solemn, half-
melancholy grandeur about him, a foreboding, per
chance, of that change of administration which may
lop him from the parent tree, — a Montezuma-like
dread of that mysterious stranger into whose hands
his sceptre must pass. In purchasing a couple of
steel pens or a few cigars of him (for he keeps a
small variety store) you feel that the parcel is done
up and handed over the counter by one of the
potent hands of government itself. . . . We have

SIX YEARS 273

found Stockbridge an exceedingly pleasant place
and have made many agreeable acquaintances.
Blanche is a favorite throughout the village and
knows everybody."

Longfellow, who was near by in Pittsfield at this
time, notes in his Diary, 16 August : " In the after
noon Lowell came with his wife from Lenox to see
us. He looks as hale as a young farmer ; she very
pale and fragile. They are driving about the coun
try and go southward to Great Barrington and the
region of the Bash Bish."

The illness of Blanche which led her parents to
take her into the country was slight and temporary.
The child grew in beauty and winning grace, and
endeared herself to her father in a manner which
left its signs long afterward. Early in March,
1847, however, when she was vigorous and gave
promise of a hearty life, she was seized suddenly
with a malady consequent upon too rapid teething,
and after a week's sickness died. " In the four
teen months she was with us (for which God be
thanked)," Lowell wrote to Briggs, " she showed
no trace of any evil tendency, and it is wonderful
how in so brief a space she could have twined her
little life round so many hearts. Wherever she
went everybody loved her. My poor father loved
her so that he almost broke his heart in endeavor
ing to console Maria when it was at last decided
the dear child was not to be spared to us." After
Blanche was buried, her father took her tiny shoes,
the only ones she had ever worn, and hung them in
his chamber. There they stayed till his own death.

274 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

" The Changeling " preserves in poetry the expe
rience of the father in this first great sorrow of his
life, and " The First Snow- Fall " intimates the con
solation which was shortly to be brought, for in
September the second child, Mabel, was born.

The literary product of 1847 was inconsiderable.
A few poems appeared, and Lowell even contem
plated trying his hand at a tragedy founded on the
Conquest of Mexico, — the first conquest, as one
of his friends slyly remarks, — suggested no doubt
by Prescott's history, which had appeared four
years earlier, and had just been followed by the
" Conquest of Peru." He made some progress
with the tragedy, and even purposed offering it in
competition for the large prize promised by For
rest for a good acting tragedy, but no line of it
appears to have been preserved. He contributed
also two or three articles to the North American
Review, and in the fall of the year he set about
the collection of such poems as he had written
since his previous volume appeared. In the midst
of this work he wrote to his friend Carter, then in
the little village of Pepperell, and his letter reflects
pleasantly the attitude he always took toward New
England country life, as well as shows the wistful-
ness of his regard for his lost child.

" There are pleasanter ways of looking at a
country village like Pepperell," he writes to his
somewhat discontented correspondent ; " there are
good studies both within doors and without, and
either picture will be new to you. Talk to the men
about farming, and you will find yourself in good

SIX YEARS 275

society at once. Inquire of the women about the
mysteries of cheese — and butter-making, and you
will be more entertained than with the Georgics.
At first, you find yourself in a false relation with
them. You touch at no points and bristle repel-
lingly at all. They flounder in their conversation
and seek shelter in the weather or the price of
pork, because they consider themselves under a
painful necessity to entertain you. They can't
converse because they try — effort being the un
timely grave of all true interchange of natures.
They make a well where there should be a foun
tain. Get them upon any common ground, and
you will find there is genuine stuff in them. The
essence of good society is simply a community in
habits of thought and topics of interest. When
we approach each other naturally, we meet easily
and gracefully ; if we hurry too much we are apt
to come together with an unpleasant bump.

" Who knows how much domestic interest was
involved in that question the goodwife asked you
about Mr. Praisegod's servant? Perhaps she has
a son, or a daughter betrothed to a neighbor's
son, who thinks of beginning life (as many of the
farmers' children in our country towns do) by en
tering into service in the city. Perhaps she wished
and yet did not dare to ask of the temptations he
would be exposed to. I love our Yankees with all
their sharp angles.

" Maria is and has been remarkably well ever
since the birth of our little darling, if I may call
her so when Blanche still holds the first place in

.276 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

our hearts. Little Miss Mabel thrives wonder
fully. She is, I think, as good a child as her little
sister — though I tremble to trace any likeness
between the two. She certainly has not Blanche's
noble and thoughtful eyes, which were noticeable
even when she was first born. But some of her
ways are very like her sister's. Those who have
seen her say that she is a very beautiful child."

Toward the end of the year the volume of poems
pressed hard upon him. " I should have written
to you," he writes to Briggs, 13 November, 1847,
" at any rate just to say that I loved you still and
to ask how you did, had I not been most prepos
terously busy with the printers. I had calculated
in a loose way that I had ' copy ' enough prepared
to make as large a volume as I intended mine
should be, but about three weeks ago the printers
overtook me, and since then we have been neck
and neck for something like a hundred pages —
thirty page heats. It was only yesterday that I
won the cup. Everybody has a notion that it is of
advantage to be out before Christmas ; and though
I feel a sort of contempt for a demand so adven
titiously created, and do not wish anybody to buy
my book but those who buy to read, yet it is one
of these little points which we find it convenient to
yield in life, and not the less readily because it
will be for our advantage not to be obstinate. I
have a foolish kind of pride in these particulars.
I had rather, for example, that you should have
copied into the Mirror a column of abuse than
those exaggerated commendations of my Louisville

SIX YEARS 277

friend. I do not know whether it is a common
feeling or not, but I can never get to consider my
self as anything more than a boy. My tempera
ment is so youthful, that whenever I am addressed
(I mean by mere acquaintances) as if my opinion
were worth anything, I can hardly help laughing.
I cannot but think to myself with an inward laugh :
' My good friend, you would be as mad as a hornet
with me, if you knew that I was only a boy of
twelve behind a bearded vizor.' This feeling is so
strong that I have got into a way of looking on
the Poet Lowell as an altogether different person
age from myself, and feel a little offended when
my friends confound the two."

The volume of poems to which Lowell refers in
this letter came out just before Christmas, 1847.
It bore the words " Second Series " on the title-
page, being coupled in the author's mind with the
Poems issued four years previous. It is in the
main a collection of the poems which Lowell in
the past four years had scattered through papers
and magazines, though he omitted several which
had appeared in print, one or two of which indeed
he went back and picked up on issuing his next
collection a score of years later. He did not draw
on his Biglow poems, reserving them for a volume
by themselves, and he omitted several that were in
a similar vein. There was perhaps no single poem
in the new series which struck a deeper note than
is to be found in one or two of the poems in the
earlier collection, yet the art of the second series
is firmer than that of the first, and the book as a

278 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

whole is distinctly more even and more free from
the mere sentimentalism which marks the previous
volume. Scattered through it are a few of -the
more serious of his anti-slavery poems, as if for a
testimony ; but he does not retain the violent, not
to say turgid, songs which he had thrown out upon
occasions of public excitement.

There is one poem among the few contributed
directly to the volume, which is familiar to lovers of
Lowell himself rather than of Lowell the poet, if
we may take his own discrimination, and it is most
likely that it was written under conditions referred
to in the letter just quoted. " An Indian-Summer
Reverie," which fills sixteen pages of the little vol
ume, near its close, bears the marks of rapid writ
ing. It is easy to believe that Lowell, coming
away from the printing-office, where he had learned
that the printers needed at once more copy, paused
near the willows, and in the warm, hazy November
afternoon let his mind drift idly over the scene
and blend with it reflections on his own life. The
poet, by virtue of his gift, is always young, and yet
when young is the most retrospective of men. Not
yet thirty, Lowell could remember his youth, and
helped by the autumn that was in the air, could
see nature and man and his own full life through
a medium which has the mistiness and the color of
the Indian Summer. There are poetic lines and
phrases in the poem, and more than all the veil of
the season hangs tremulously over the whole, so
that one is gently stirred by the poetic feeling of
the rambling verses ; yet, after all, the most endur-

SIX YEARS 279

ing impression is of the young man himself in that
still hour of his life, when he was conscious, not so
much of a reform to which he must put his hand,
as of the love of beauty, and of the vague melan
choly which mingles with beauty in the soul of a
, susceptible poet. The river winding through the
marshes, the distant sound of the ploughman, the
near chatter of the chipmunk, the individual trees,
each living its own life, the inarch of the seasons
flinging lights and shadows over the broad scene,
the pictures of human life associated with his own
experience, the hurried survey of his village years
— all these pictures float before his vision ; and
then, with an abruptness which is like the choking
of the singer's voice with tears, there wells up the
thought of the little life which held as in one
precious drop the love and faith of his heart. Mr.
Briggs, in a letter written upon receiving the vol
ume, says : " I have just laid it aside with my eyes
full of tears after reading 'The Changeling,' which
appears to me the greatest poem in the collection,
and I think that it will be so regarded by and by,
a good many years hence, when I shall be wholly
forgotten and you will only be known by the free
thoughts you will leave behind you." Mr. Briggs
had himself lost a child, and his grief had been
commemorated by Lowell : this same letter an
nounces the birth of a daughter. One's personal
experience often colors if it does not obscure one's
critical judgment : but in taking account of Lowell's
life and its expression, we may not overlook the
fact that up to this time certainly he was singu-

280 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

larly ingenuous in making poetry, not simply a
vehicle for the conveyance of large emotions gen
eralized from personal experience, but a precipita
tion of his most intimate emotions. His love, his
tender feelings for his friends, his generous and
ardent hopes for humanity, his passion for freedom
and truth, all lay at the depths of his being ; but
they rose to the sui-face perpetually in his poems
and his letters, and he had scarcely learned to hold
them in check by that hard mundane wisdom which
comes to most through the attrition of daily living.

Thus far Lowell had looked out on life pretty
steadily from the sheltered privacy of a happy
home, and he was not immediately to change his
surroundings ; but a certain induration was now to
be effected which can scarcely be said to have
arrested his spontaneity, but may fairly be looked
upon as leading him to regard himself more as
others regarded him, as no longer a " boy of twelve
behind a bearded vizor," but as grown up and be
come a man of the world. For it was not long
after this that the relation into which he had en
tered with the National Anti- Slavery Standard,
and which had undergone a sort of suspension as we
have seen, became a very close and exacting one.

The seclusion of his life satisfied Lowell ; he was
an infrequent visitor to Boston even, and made
but few journeys. Now and then he went to New
York, and, as we have seen, once to Stockbridge.
To Canada also he made one journey ; but it is
clear from the circumstances attending these flit-
tings that the Lowells had no money to spend on

SIX YEARS 281

luxuries. They could live simply and without
much outlay of cash at Elm wood, but travelling
meant hoarding first, and in those early married
years the young couple' was not often out of debt.
Even a trip to New York had to be postponed
again and again on this account. Mr. Gay's drafts
in payment of account for contributions to the
Standard were irregular and always seemed to
come just in the nick of time.

" I thought to see you this week," Lowell wrote
to Gay, 8 June, 1848, when acknowledging one of
these raven-flights, — " but cannot come yet. I
cannot come without any money, and leave my
wife with 62| cents, such being the budget brought
in by my secretary of the treasury this week. . . .
I am expecting some money daily — I always am
— I always have been, and yet have never been
fairly out of debt since I entered college." And
again, writing to the same, 26 February, 1849,
" The truth is, that I have just been able to keep
my head above water ; but there is a hole in my
life-preserver, and what wind I can raise from your
quarter comes just in season to make up for leakage
and save me from total submersion. Since the
day after I received your remittance for December,
I have literally not hud a copper, except a small
sum which I borrowed. It was all spent before I
got it. So is the last one, too. As long as I have
money I don't think anything about it, except to
fancy my present stock inexhaustible and capable
of buying up the world." A few days later, on
receiving the draft which his half-humorous letter

282 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

called for, he wrote in the same strain : " I am not
very often down in the mouth : but sometimes, at
the end of the year, when I have done a tolerable
share of work, and have nothing to show for it, I
feel as if I had rather be a spruce clerk on India
wharf than a man of letters. Regularly I look
forward to New Year, and think that I shall begin
the next January out of debt, and as regularly I
am disappointed."

Yet all this time, with his frugal living and his
vain effort to be even with the world, he could not
refrain from obeying his generous impulses. His
gift of " A Fable for Critics " to Briggs illustrates
this spirit, and a passage in one of his letters shows
the secret giver who is pei-haps a little more lovable
in the eyes of the Lord than the cheerful public
one. Mr. Briggs had written to him 16 November,
1849 : " On Monday evening Page and I were at
Willis's house, and in the course of a conversation
about Poe, Willis mentioned that you had written
him a very pleasant letter about Poe, and enclosed
something really handsome for Mrs. Clemm. ' I
could not help thinking,' said Willis, ' that if
Lowell had known what Poe wrote to me about
him just previous to his death, he would hardly
have been so liberal.' " " What a contemptible
idea of me Willis must have," Lowell replied, " to
think that anything Poe might say of me would
make any difference in my feeling pity for his
poor mother-in-law. I confess it does not raise
my opinion of Willis. I knew before as well as I
know now, that Poe must have been abusing me,

SIX YEARS 283

for he knew that ever since his conduct toward
you about the Broadway Journal I had thought
meanly of him. I think Willis would hardly care
to see some letters of Poe to me in which he is
spoken of. My ' pleasant letter ' to W. was about
ten lines, rather less than more I fancy, and my
' generous donation ' was five dollars ! I particu
larly requested of him that it should be anonymous,
which I think a good principle, as it guards us
against giving from any unworthy motive. That
Willis should publish it at the street corners only
proves the truth of Swift's axiom that any man
may gain the reputation of generosity by £20 a
year spent judiciously."

When Hawthorne lost his place in the Salem
Custom House, Lowell with other of his friends
made active effort to set him on his feet. He wrote
to Mr. Duyckinck, 13 January, 1850 : " Perhaps
you know that Hawthorne was last spring turned
out of an office which he held in the Salem Custom
House, and which was his sole support. He is
now, I learn, very poor, and some money has just
been raised for him by his friends in this neighbor
hood. Could not something be also done in New

O

York? I know that you appreciate him, and that
you will be glad to do anything in your power. I
take it for granted that you know personally all
those who would be most likely to give. I write
also to Mr. O'Sullivan, who is a friend of Haw
thorne's, but am ignorant whether he is now in
New York. Of course Hawthorne is entirely ig
norant that anything of the kind is going on, and

284 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

it would be better that ' a bird in the air ' should
seem to have carried the news to New York, and
that if anything be raised, it should go thence,
directly, as a spontaneous gift."

The money which Lowell and others collected
for Hawthorne was sent in the most anonymous
fashion through Mr. George S. Hillard, and Haw
thorne acknowledged the gift in a letter which
moves one by its mingling of gratitude and humili
ation. " I read your letter," he writes to Hillard,
" in the vestibule of the post office [at Salem] ;
and it drew — what my troubles never have — the
water to my eyes ; so that I was glad of the sharply
cold west wind that blew into them as I came
homeward, and gave them an excuse for being red
and bleared.

" There was much that was very sweet — and
something too that was very bitter — mingled with
that same moisture. It is sweet to be remembered
and cared for by one's friends — some of whom
know me for what I am, while others, pei'haps,
know me only through a generous faith — sweet to
think that they deem me worth upholding in my
poor work through life. And it is bitter, never
theless, to need their support. It is something
else besides pride that teaches me that ill-success
in life is really and justly a matter of shame. I
am ashamed of it, and I ought to be. The fault
of a failure is attributable — in a great degree at
least — to the man who fails. I should apply this
truth in judging of other men ; and it behooves
me not to shun its point or edge in taking it home

SIX YEARS 285

to my own heart. Nobody has a right to live in
the world, unless he be strong and able, and ap
plies his ability to good purpose.

" The money, dear Hillard, will smooth my path
for a long time to come. The only way in which
a man can retain his self-respect, while availing
himself of the generosity of his friends, is by mak
ing it an incitement to his utmost exertion's, so
that he may not need their help again. I shall
look upon it so — nor will shun any drudgery that
my hand shall find to do, if thereby I may win
bread."

Nearly four years later, when Hawthorne had
leapt into fame and prosperity after the publica
tion of " The Scarlet Letter," he wrote again to
Hillard from Liverpool : " I herewith send you a
draft on Ticknor for the sum (with interest in
cluded) which was so kindly given me by un
known friends, through you, about four years ago.
I have always hoped and intended to do this,
from the first moment when I made up my mind
to accept the money. It would not have been
right to speak of this purpose, before it was in my
power to accomplish it ; but it has never been out
of my mind for a single day, nor hardly, I think,
for a single working hour. I am most happy that
this loan (as I may fairly call it, at this moment)
can now be repaid without the risk on my part of
leaving my wife and children utterly destitute. I
should have done it sooner ; but I felt that it would
be selfish to purchase the great satisfaction for
myself, at any fresh risk to them. We are IK t

286 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

rich, nor are we ever likely to be ; but the misera
ble pinch is over.

" The friends who were so generous to me must
not suppose that I have not felt deeply grateful,
nor that my delight at relieving myself from this
pecuniary obligation is of any ungracious kind. I
have been grateful all along, and am more so now
than ever. This act of kindness did me an un
speakable amount of good ; for it came when I
most needed to be assured that anybody thought it
worth while to keep me from sinking. And it did
me even greater good than this, in making me sen
sible of the need of sterner efforts than my former
ones, in order to establish a right for myself to
live and be comfortable. For it is my creed (and
was so even at that wretched time) that a man has
no claim upon his fellow creatures, beyond bread
and water, and a grave, unless he can win it by his
own strength or skill. But so much the kinder
were those unknown friends whom I thank again
with all my heart." 1

Aside from his modest salary from the Standard,
Lowell's income from his writings was meagre
enough. In publishing his volumes of poetry, he
appears to have been largely if not entirely at the
expense of manufacture, and in the imperfectly
organized condition of the book market at that
time, he had himself to supervise arrangements for
selling his volume of poems in New York. There

1 These letters from Hawthorne were first printed in the Lon
don Athenceum, 10, 17 August, 1889, and have since been included
in vol. xvii. of the Old Manse Edition of Hawthorne's writings.

SIX YEARS 287

are one or two hints that, after his release from
contributing to the Standard, he contemplated
some new editorial position, perhaps even meditated
a fresh periodical venture. At any rate, his friend
Briggs remonstrated with him, in a letter written
15 March, 1849 : " Don't, my dear friend, think
of selling yourself to a weekly or monthly period
ical of any kind, except as a contributor deo vo-
lente. The drudgery of editorship would destroy
you, and bring you no profit. Make up your mind
resolutely to refuse any offers, let them be never
so tempting. In a mere pecuniary point of view,
it would be more profitable for you to sell your
writings where you could procure the best pay for
them ; they will be worth more and more as your
wants grow." And in December, 1850, Emerson,
who was enlisting Hawthorne's interest in a new
magazine projected by Mr. George Bradburn,
" that impossible problem of a New England maga
zine," as he calls it, writes : " I told him to go to
Lowell, who had been for a year meditating the
like project."

It is possible that there was some plan for turn
ing the Massachusetts Quarterly Review into a
brisker and more distinctly literary journal. At
any rate, Lowell, writing to Emerson 19 February,
1850, says : " The plan seems a little more forward.
I have seen Parker, who is as placable as the raven
down of darkness, and not unwilling to shift his
Old Man of the sea to other shoulders. Longfellow
also is toward, and talks in a quite Californian
manner of raising funds by voluntary subscription."

288 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

The Massachusetts Quarterly, which had been
started in 1847 as an organ of more progressive
thought than the North American Review, was
under the management of Theodore Parker, and
Lowell was evidently a welcome though not con
stant contributor, as this letter to the editor inti
mates : —

ELMWOOD, July 28, [1848].

MY DEAR SIR : — Do you know where parsons
go to who don't believe in original sin ? I think
that your experience as an editor will bring you
nearer orthodoxy by convincing you of the total
depravity of contributors. I have no doubt that
the plague of booksellers was sent to punish authors
for their sins toward editors.

Your note was so illegible that I was unable to
make out that part of it in which you reproached
me for my remissness. I shall choose rather to
treasure it as containing I know not what commen
dations of my promptitude and punctuality. I
will have it framed and glazed and exhibit it to
editors inquiring my qualifications, as the enthusi
astic testimony of the Rev. Theo. Parker, and fear
lessly defy all detection.

I assure you that it is not my fault that I did
not send the enclosed l earlier. I have suffered all
this summer with a severe pain in the head, which
has entirely crippled me for a great part of the
time. It is what people call a, fullness in the head,
but its effect is to produce an entire emptiness.

As it is, I am reluctant to send the article.

1 An article on Lund or.

SIX YEARS 289

I hardly know what is in it myself, but I am quite
conscious that it is disjointed and wholly incom
plete. I found it impossible to concentrate my
mind upon it so as to give it any unity or entire-
ness. Believe the writing it has worried me more
than the not receiving it worried you.

I send it as to a man in a strait to whom any
thing will be useful. I throw it quasi lignum
naiifrago. If I had one of the cedarn columns of
the temple, I would cast it overboard to you ; but
having only a shapeless log, I give you that, as
being as useful to a drowning man as if it were
already made into a Mercury.

I have, you see, given directions to the printer
to copy " The Hamadryad." My copy is a bor
rowed one, and if you own one I should be obliged
to you if you would send it to the printing-office,
as your warning about not smutching, etc., would
probably have more weight with your printers than
mine. If you have no copy please let me know
through the P. O. and I will send the one I have,
as I have obtained permission to do.

I should like to see the proofs, and as I am
going to New York on Monday next to be absent
a week, I should like to have them sent to me
there to the care of S. H. Gay, 142 Nassau St., if
it should be necessary to print before I return. If
there is too much hurry, will you be good enough
to look at them yourself.

If the article seem too short for a Review, you
are welcome to insert it among your literary notices,
or to return it.

290 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

I must thank you before I close my note for the
pleasure I received in reading a recent sermon of
yours which I saw in the Chronotype. You have
not so much mounted the pulpit as lifted it up to
you.

Very truly your Eumenides-driven contributor,

J. R. L.1

The most substantial magazine in his own neigh
borhood was the North American JReview, and to
that, in his early period, Lowell contributed but
half a dozen articles. It is partly characteristic of
the manner of the heavy reviewing of the day, and
wholly characteristic of Lowell, that in each of
these cases quite two thirds of the article is taken
up with prolegomena. Before he could settle
down to an examination of " The New Timon," he
must needs analyze at great length the quality of
Pope, who had served as a sort of pattern : it is
interesting, by the way, to note that in the last
paragraph of his review, he guesses the book to
have been written by Bulwer. So in reviewing
Disraeli's "Tancred," he despatches the book it
self somewhat summarily after a dozen pages of
witty reflections on novel-writing. A review of
Browning is more definitely an examination of this
poet, with large extracts from " Luria," though it
has the inevitable long introduction on poetry in

1 In a note to T. W. Higginson, who proposed an article in the
Atlantic on Parker, Lowell wrote 28 June, 1860: "I think that
folks have confounded (as they commonly do) force with power in
estimating him, and so have overrated him."

SIX YEARS 291

general ; but its appreciation and discriminating
judgment of Browning at a time when " Sordello,"
" Paracelsus," and " Bells and Pomegranates " were
the only poems and collection by which to measure
him, indicate surely how direct and at first hand
were Lowell's critical appraisals. " Above all," he
says, after a glowing rehearsal of the contents of
" Bells and Pomegranates," " his personages are
not mere mouthpieces for the author's idiosyncra
sies. We take leave of Mr. Browning at the end

O

of ' Sordello,' and except in some shorter lyrics
see no more of him. His men and women are men
and women, and not Mr. Browning masquerading
in different colored dominoes : " and in the same
article occurs a passage which might lead one to
think Lowell was musing over his own qualities :
" Wit makes other men laugh, and that only once.
It may be repeated indefinitely to new audiences
and produce the same result. Humor makes the
humorist himself laugh. He is a part of his
humor, and it can never be repeated without loss."
In the more substantial literary criticism of his
maturity Lowell occupied himself mainly with the
great names of world literature, but at this time
he was especially intent on his contemporaries in
America and England, and he was keenly alive
to manifestations of spirit which gave evidence of
transcending the bounds of local reputation. In a
review of Longfellow's " Kavanagh " he made the
book really only a peg from which to hang a long
disquisition upon nationality in literature, a subject
which, it will be remembered, receives considerable

292 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

attention in the book. Lowell's own conclusion
is that " Nationality is only a less narrow form of
provincialism, a sublimer sort of clownishness and
ill manners."

It was with the heartiest good - will that he
welcomed Thoreau's " Week on the Concord and
Merrimack Rivers," just after the publication of
that book. As in his other reviews of this pe
riod, he must needs preface his consideration of
the book itself with some general remarks on
travellers, which he liked well enough to preserve
in his " Leaves from my Journal in Italy and Else
where," published in " Fireside Travels ; " but the
main part of his article is a generous appreciation
of Thoreau's faculty of insight into the things of
nature. " A graduate of Cambridge, — the fields
and woods, the axe, the hoe, and the rake have since
admitted him ad eunclem. Mark how his imagina
tive sympathy goes beneath the crust, deeper down
than that of Burns, and needs no plough to turn
up the object of its muse." He makes, however, a
clear distinction between Thoreau the observer and
man of reflection and Thoreau the bookman. " As
long as he continues an honest Boswell, his book is
delightful ; but sometimes he serves his two rivers
as Hazlitt did Northcote, and makes them run
Thoreau or Emerson, or, indeed, anything but their
own transparent element. What, for instance, have
Concord and Merrimack to do with Boodh, them
selves professors of an elder and to them wholly
sufficient religion, namely, the willing subjects of
watery laws, to seek their ocean ? We have digres-

SIX YEARS 293

sions on Booclh, on Anaoreon (with translations
hardly so good as Cowley), on Perseus, on Friend
ship, and we know not what. AVe come upon them
like snags, jolting us headforemost out of our
places as we are rowing placidly up stream, or
drifting down. Mr. Thoreau becomes so absorbed
in these discussions that he seems, as it were, to
catch a crab, and disappears uncomfortably from
his seat at the bow-oar. We could forgive them
all, especially that on Books, and that on Friend
ship (which is worthy of one who has so long com
merced with Nature and with Emerson), we could
welcome them all, were they put by themselves at
the end of the book. But as it is, they are out of
proportion and out of place, and mar our Merri-
macking dreadfully. We were bid to a river-party,
not to be preached at. They thrust themselves
obtrusively out of the narrative, like those quarries
of red glass which the Bowery dandies (emulous of
Sisyphus) push laboriously before them as breast
pins." He finds fault with Thoreau for some of
his verse, but regards with admiration his prose.
" The style is compact, and the language has an
antique purity like wine grown colorless with age."
Lowell expressed the same admiration for Tho-
reau's style when he wrote again about him a dozen
years later, after re-reading his books, but his
point of view had by that time changed, and he
was more concerned to look into Thoreau's philoso
phy of life.

The article on Landor, written at this time, was
quite exclusively an examination of the genius of a

294 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

writer for whom he had long had a great admira
tion ; and inasmuch as he had himself tried the
form of conversation, it is worth while to note the
excellent judgment he passes on Lander's art.
" Of his ' Imaginary Conversations ' we may gen
erally say that they would be better defined as
dialogues between the imaginations of the persons
introduced than between the persons themselves.
There is a something in all men and women who
deserve the much -abused title of individuals,
which we call their character, something finer than
the man or woman, and yet which is the man or
woman nevertheless. We feel it in whatever they
say or do, but it is better than their speech or deed,
and can be conceived of apart from these. It is
his own conceptions of the characters of different
personages that Landor brings in as interlocutors.
Between Shakespeare's historical and ideal person
ages we perceive no difference in point of reality.
They are alike historical to us. We allow him to
substitute his Richard for the Richard of history,
and we suspect that those are few who doubt
whether Caliban ever existed. Whatever Hamlet
and Caesar say we feel to be theirs, though we know
it to be Shakespeare's. Whatever Landor puts
into the mouth of Pericles and Michael Angelo and
Tell, we know to be his, though we can conceive
that it might have been theirs. Don Quixote
would never have attacked any puppets of his. The
hand which jerked the wires, and the mouth which
uttered the speeches would have been too clearly
visible." Here again it is interesting to take up

SIX YEARS 295

the reminiscences of Landor and of his own early
acquaintance with his writings, which he printed in
1888, when introducing- a group of Lander's letters ;
for the comparison shows that though his enthu
siasm for this writer had somewhat abated with
years, the general tone of his judgment was the
same.

The article on Landor was a deferred one. It
was to have been written for the June number of
the Massachusetts Quarterly Iteview* but did not
appear till December. His child's sickness and
work on the " Biglow Papers " drove other things
out of his head. Indeed, as he wrote rapidly when
he was moved to write at all, so he was afflicted
with obstinate inertia when ideas did not come
spontaneously. " I am again a delinquent," he
wrote to Gay, 25 November, 1848, — " and this
time I am ashamed to sa}T, out of pure laziness and
having nothing to write about. But my next article
I intend to write on Tuesday, so that you will be
sure of it in time. Do forgive me this once more,
and forgive also (if you can) the stupidity of my
contribution. I feel like a squeezed turnip on which
the experiment of extracting blood has been tried.
I am haunted, like Barnaby Rudge's father, with
the sound of a Bell, not having sent anything yet
to that horrible annual.1 Upon my word I am
almost crazy with it. I have not an idea in my
head, and believe firmly that I never shall have
one again. And I obtained a reprieve ending a
week ago last Friday !

1 The Liberty Bell.

296 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

But if he groaned thus over writing for publi
cation, he was lavish of criticism and what might
be called material for literature, when writing to
his friends. The letters which Mr. Norton prints,
dated in this period, abound in felicitous comment
on men and incidents, and even a postscript will
sometimes ramble on into the dimensions almost of
a separate letter. After indulging in a long epistle
to Mr. Briggs, dated 12 May, 1848, he suddenly
remembers that he means to send some poems of his
wife's for a collection which Griswold was making
of the writings of the female poets of America ; and
after some lively comments on her contemporaries,
he takes note of articles recently written by Briggs,
and falls into a strain which he has disclosed else
where in somewhat similar terms : " You are wrong
and N. P. W. is right (as I think) in the main, in
what he says about American Society. There is as
striking a want of external as of internal culture
among our men. We ought to have produced the
finest race of gentlemen in the world. But Euro
peans have laughed us into a nation of snobs. We
are ashamed of our institutions. Our literature
aims to convince Europe that America is as con
servative and respectable as herself. I have often
remarked that educated Americans have the least
dignified bearing of any cultivated people. They
all stoop in the shoulders, intellectually as well as
physically. A nation of freemen, we alone of all
others have the gait of slaves. The great power of
the English aristocracy lies in their polish. That
impresses the great middle class, who have a sort of

SIX YEARS 297

dim conception of its value. A man gains in power
as he gains in ease. It is a great advantage to him
to be cultivated in all parts of his nature. Among
scholars, It. W. E. has as fine a manner, as much
poise, as I ever saw. Yet I have seen him quite
dethroned by a pure man of the world. His face
degenerated into a puzzled state. I go so far as to
believe that all great men have felt the importance
of the outward and visible impression they should
produce. Socrates was as wise as Plato, indeed he
was Plato's master, but Plato dressed better, and
has the greater name. Pericles was the first gen
tleman of Greece, — not the George IV. though,
exactly. Remember Cassar's laurel-wig.

" I might multiply instances, but I wish to have
room to say how much I have been pleased with
Thackeray's ' Vanity Fair.' He has not Dickens's
talents as a caricaturist, but he draws with more
truth. Dickens can take a character to pieces and
make us laugh immoderately at the comic parts of
it — or he takes only the comic part, as boys take
the honey-bag of the bee, destroying the whole in
sect to get at it. But Thackeray can put a character
together. He has more constructive power. D. is
a satirizer, T. a satirist. I don't think D. ever made
anything equal to Becky Sharp. Itawdon Craw-
ley, too, is admirable ; so in truth are all the char
acters in their way, except Amelia, who is nothing
in particular.

" I liked ' Wuthering Heights,' too, as you did,
though not so much. There is great power in it, but
it is like looking at nature through a crooked pane

298 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

of glass. Some English journalist has nicknamed
the author Salvator Rosa, and our journalists of
course all repeat it. But it is nonsense. For it
is not wildness and rudeness that the author is
remarkable for, but delicacy. A character may be
distorted without being wild or rude. Unnatural
causes may crook a violet as well as an oak. Ro
chester is a truly refined character, and his rough
ness and coarseness are only the shields (scabs, as
it were) over his finer nature. My sheet ends our
conversation."

There is a picture of the Lowells at home at this
time, drawn by Miss Fredrika Bremer. Lowell
had reviewed her writings in their English dress
— it was his first contribution to the North Ameri
can, — and on her coming to America a meeting
occurred, which resulted in a friendly visit paid
by Miss Bremer to Elmwood. The form in which
she recorded her impressions of travel was in let
ters home, afterward gathered into a book. It
was on 15 December, 1849, that she wrote : —

" The whole family assembles every day for
morning and evening prayer around the vener
able old man ; and he it is who blesses every meal.
His prayers, which are always extempore, are full
of the true and inward life, and I felt them as a
pleasant, refreshing dew upon my head, and seldom
arose from my knees with dry eyes. With him
live his youngest son, the poet, and his wife ; such
a handsome and happy young couple as one can
hardly imagine. He is full of life and youthful
ardor, she as gentle, as delicate, and as fair as a

SIX YEARS 299

lily, and one of the most lovable women that I
have seen in this country, because her beauty is
full of soul and grace, as is everything which she
does or says. This young couple belong to the
class of those of whom one can be quite sure ; one
could not for an hour, nay, not for half an hour, be
doubtful about them. She, like him, has a poet
ical tendency, and has also written anonymously
some poems, remai-kable for their deep and tender
feeling, especially maternal, but her mind has more
philosophical depth than his. Singularly enough,
I did not discern in him that deeply earnest spirit
which charmed me in many of his poems. He
seems to me occasionally to be brilliant, witty,
gay, especially in the evening, when he has what
he calls his ' evening fever,' and his talk is then
like an incessant play of fireworks. I find him
very agreeable and amiable ; he seems to have
many friends, mostly young men. . . . There is a
trace of beauty and taste in everything she [Mrs.
L.] touches, whether of mind or body ; and above
all she beautifies life. . . . Pity it is that this
much-loved young wife seems to have delicate
lungs. Her low, weak voice tells of this. [Madame
Lowell was plainly not at home.] Maria reads
her husband's poetry charmingly well." 1

Near the close of 1849 Lowell reissued in two
volumes, under the imprint of "VV. D. Ticknor &
Co., the two series which had appeared in 1843

1 The Homes of the New World : Impressions of America. By
Fredrika Bremer. New York : Harper & Bros. 1853. Vol. i.
pp. 130, 131.

300 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

and 1847, and thus registered himself, as it were,
among the regular vine-growers on the slopes of
Parnassus. Moreover, with his former products
thus formally garnered, he began to please himself
with the prospect of some more thoroughgoing
piece of poetical composition. He was practically
clear of his regular engagement with the Stand
ard, and his " Biglow Papers " had given him the
opportunity to free his mind in an exhilarating
fashion on the supreme question of the hour.
There was something of a rebound from this in
" The Vision of Sir Launfal," but the free use of
the Yankee vernacular with the immediate popu
larity which it secured must have set him think
ing of the possibility of using this form in some
freer and more genuinely poetic fashion. The little
pastoral, " The Courtin'," published in a fragment
ary form, was an experiment in this direction at
ouce highly successful, and accordingly we find
him writing to Mr. Briggs on the eve of the pub
lication of his two volumes of Poems : "I think
you will find my poems improved in the new edi
tion. I have not altered much, but I have left out
the poorest and put others in their places. My
next volume, I think, will show an advance. It is
to be called ' The Nooning.' Now guess what it
will be. The name suggests pleasant thoughts,
does it not ? But I shall not tell you anything
about it yet, and you must not mention it." And
a few weeks later, with the project still high in his
mind, he wrote to the same correspondent : " Maria
invented the title for me, and is it not a pleasant

SIX YEARS 301

one ? I am going to bring together a party of half
a dozen old friends at Elm wood. They go down
to the river and bathe, and then one proposes that
they shall go up into a great willow-tree (which
stands at the end of the causey near our house,
and has seats in it) to take their nooning. There
they agree that each shall tell a story or recite a
poem of some sort. In the tree they find a coun
tryman already resting himself, who enters into
the plan and tells a humorous tale, with touches of
Yankee character and habits in it. /am to read
my poem of the ' Voyage of Leif ' to Vinland, in
which I mean to bring my hero straight into Bos
ton Bay, as befits a Bay-state poet. Two of my
poems are already written — one ' The Fountain of
Youth ' (no connection with any other firm), and
the other an ' Address to the Muse ' by the Tran-
scendentalist of the party. I guess I am safe in
saying that the first of these two is the best thing
I have done yet. But you shall judge when you
see it. But ' Leif's Voyage ' is to be far better."
The scheme thus formed intended clearly a group
of poems lightly tied together : indeed the plan,
always a favorite one, was carried out on very
nearly the same lines by Mr. Longfellow in his
" Tales of a Wayside Inn " a dozen years later,
and it is not impossible that Lowell, who had been
interrupted in his plan, was still more reluctant to
complete it, when it would have so much the air
of being a copy of his neighbor's design. At any
rate, the disjecta membra of the poem found pub
lication in a straggling fashion. Writing to Mr.

302 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

J. B. Thayer, in reply to an inquiry about the
poem, years after, Lowell says : " ' The June Idyl '
[renamed ' Under the Willows '] (written in '51
or '52) is a part of what I had written as the in
duction to it. The description of spring in one of
the ' Biglow Papers ' is another fragment of the
same, tagged with rhyme for the nonce. So is a
passage in ' Mason and Slidell,' beginning ' Oh
strange new world.' The ' Voyage to Vinland,'
the ' Pictures from Appledore,' and ' Fitz- Adam's
Story ' were written for the ' Nooning ' as origi
nally planned. So, you see, I had made some pro
gress. Perhaps it will come by and by — not in
the shape I meant at first, for something broke my
life in two, and I cannot piece it together again.
Besides, the Muse asks all of a man, and for many
years I have been unable to give myself up as I
would." To this list should be added " Fragments
of an Unfinished Poem," which was printed in the
author's final Riverside edition, when he had aban
doned all thought of completing the " Nooning."

That Lowell was conscious of his vocation by
this time, and that with the publication of his col
lected poems he was entering upon a new, resolute
course of poetic action, is clear from a few preg
nant sentences in a letter to Briggs, dated 23
January, 1850 : " My poems hitherto have been a
true record of my life, and I mean that they shall
continue to be. ... I begin to feel that I must
enter on a new year of my apprenticeship. My
poems have thus far had a regular and natural
sequence. First, Love and the mere happiness of

SIX YEARS 303

existence beginning to be conscious of itself, then
Freedom — both being the sides which Beauty pre
sented to me — and now I am going to try more
wholly after Beauty herself. Next, if I live, I
shall present Life as I have seen it. In the
'Nooning' I shall have not even a glance towards
Reform. If the poems I have already written are
good for anything they are perennial, and it is
tedious as well as foolish to repeat one's self. I
have preached sermons enow, and now I am going
to come down out of the pulpit and go about
among my parish. I shall turn my barrel over
and read my old discourses ; it will be time to
write new ones when my hearers have sucked all
the meaning out of those old ones. Certainly I
shall not grind for any Philistines, whether Re
formers or Conservatives. I find that Reform
cannot take up the whole of me, and I am quite
sure that eyes were given us to look about us with
sometimes, and not to be always looking forward.
If some of my good red-hot friends were to see
this they would call me a backslider, but there are
other directions in which one may get away from
people besides the rearward one. ... I am not
certain that my next appearance will not be in a
pamphlet on the Hungarian question in answer to
the North American llavicw. But I shall not
write anything if I can help it. I am tired of con
troversy, and, though I have cut out the oars with
which to row up my friend Bowen, yet I have
enough to do, arid, besides, am not so well as usual,
being troubled in my head as I was summer before

304 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

last. I should like to play for a year, and after 1
have written and printed the ' Nooning ' I mean to
take a nooning and lie under the trees looking at
the skies."

The Hungarian movement interested both Lowell
and his sister, Mrs. Putnam, deeply. Lowell had
printed in the Standard his verses to Kossuth,
and Mrs. Putnam had written vigorously in the
Christian Examiner. Robert Carter also printed
a series of papers on the subject in the Boston
Atlas, which were reprinted in a pamphlet. Low
ell did not write the pamphlet he meditated, but a
year later he wrote seven columns in the Boston
Daily Advertiser, in defence of his sister against
Professor Bowen's attack. " It was the severest
job I ever undertook," he wrote Gay. " I believe
I was longer at work in actual hours than in writ
ing all Ilosea Biglow and the ' Fable for Critics.' "
He had displayed his interest previously by a stir
ring appeal for funds in aid of the Hungarian
exiles.1

And now came three events to the little house
hold at Elmwood that wrought a change in the life
of Lowell and his wife. The first was the death of
their third child, Eose, 2 February, 1850, after a
half-year's life only. The loss brought vividly to
remembrance the experience which had entered so
deeply into their lives when the first-born, Blanche,
was taken away. " For Rose," Lowell writes to
Gay, " I would have no funeral ; my father only
made a prayer, and then I walked up alone to

1 See Boston Courier, 3 January, 1850.

SIX YEARS 305

Mount Auburn and saw her body laid by her sis
ter's. She was a very lovely child — we think the
loveliest of our three. She was more like Blanche
than Mabel, and her disease was the same. Her
illness lasted a week, but I never had any hope, so
that she died to me the first day the doctor came.
She was very beautiful — fair, with large dark
gray eyes and fine features. Her smile was espe
cially charming, and she was full of smiles till her
sickness began. Dear little child ! she had never
spoken, only smiled."

Again death came that way, and on 30 March,

1850, Lowell's mother died. The cloud which had
for years hung over her had deepened, and her death
was looked upon as a release, for whether at home
or in seclusion she was alike separated from her
family. As Lowell wrote : —

" We can touch thee, still we are no nearer;
Gather round thee, still thou art alone ;
The wide chasm of reason is between us ;
Thou confutest kindness with a moan ;
We can speak to thee, and thou canst answer,
Like two prisoners through a wall of stone.'' 1

The third event was the birth of the fourth child
and only son, Walter. Gay had lately lost a boy,
and Lowell's announcement to him of this birth
was tempered by the fact. " I should have written
you a note the other day," he writes, 3 January,

1851, " to let you know that we have a son, only
I could not somehow make up my mind to it. It
pained me to think of the associations which such

1 " The Darkened Mind."

30G JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

news would revive in you. Yet I had rather you
should hear it from me than from any one else.
. . . The boy is a nice little fellow, and said (by
his mother) to look like me. He was born 011 the
22d December, and I am doubting whether to
name him Pilgrim Father or no. I have offered
Maria her choice between that name and Larkin,
which last I think would go uncommonly well with
Lowell. She has not yet made up her mind.

" But now for the tragic part of it. Just after
we had got him cleverly born on the 22d, there
springs me up an Antiquary (like a Jack in a
box) and asserts that the Pilgrims landed on the
21st, that eleven days were added instead of ten in
allowing for O. S., and that there is no use in dis
puting about it. But I appeal to any sensible per
son (I have no reference to antiquaries) whether,
as applied to Larkin, this decision be not of the
nature of an ex post facto law, by which he, the
said Larkin, ought not of right to be concluded.
What was he to know of it in his retirement, with
no access to reading-rooms or newspapers ? In
heriting from his father a taste for anniversaries,
no doubt he laid his plans with deliberation, and
is he now to give up his birthright for a mess
of antiquarian pottage ? Had proper notice been
given, he would surely have bestirred himself to
have arrived a day earlier. On the whole I shall
advise Larkin to contest the point. For my part,
I shall stick to the 22d, though it upset the whole
Gregorian calendar, which to me, indeed, smacks
a little too strongly of the Scarlet Woman. Would

•J

*•*

CHAPTER VII

FIFTEEN MONTHS IN EUROPE
1851-1852

MR. AND MRS. LOWELL, their two children, a
nurse, and a goat sailed from Boston, Saturday, 12
July, 1851, in the barque Sultana, Watson, mas
ter, which went to the Mediterranean and dropped
the little party at Malta. " We had a very good
run from land to land," Lowell wrote his father a
few days before reaching Malta, " making the light
at Cape St. Vincent on the night of the seven
teenth day out. I stayed upon deck until we could
see the light, — the cape we did not see at all, nor
any land till the next morning. Then we saw the
coast of Spain very dim and blue, — only the out
line of a mountain and some high land here and
there. The day before we made land we had a
tolerably good specimen of a gale of wind, enough
at any rate to get up so much sea that we were in
danger of having our lee quarter boat washed away,
the keel of which hangs above the level of the poop
deck. As it was we lost the covering of one of our
port-holes, which was knocked out by the water
which was swashing about on the lower deck.

"• I was the only one of the party at table that
day, and there was an amount of vivacity among

310 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

the dishes such as I never saw before. I took my
soup by the process of absorption, the whole of it
having suddenly leaped out of my plate into my
lap. The table was literally at an angle of 45° all
the time, with occasional eccentricities of the hori
zontal and the perpendicular, every change of level
(or dip rather) being accomplished with a sudden
jerk, which gave us a fine opportunity for study
ing the force of projectiles. Imagine the Captain,
the First Mate, and myself at every one of these
sudden hiccoughs (as it were) of the vessel, each
endeavoring to think that he has six hands and
finding too late that he has only two, during which
interval between doubt and certainty, I have seen
the contents of three dishes, ABC, change places,
A taking the empty space left by B, B in like
manner ejecting C, and C very na,turally, having
nowhere else to go, is thrown loose upon society
and leads a nomadic life, first upon the tablecloth,
then upon the seat, then upon the floor, every new
position being a degradation, until at last it finds
precarious lodging in one of the lee staterooms.
You find your legs in a permanent condition of
drunkenness, and that without any of the previous
exhilaration. The surface of the country is such as
I never saw described in any geographical work ;
the only thing at all approaching it which I have
met with was the state of affairs during the great
earthquake at Lisbon. You have just completed
your arrangements for descending an inclined
plane, when you find yourself climbing an almost
perpendicular precipice, the surface of which being,

FIFTEEN MONTHS IN EUROPE 311

by a curious freak of nature, of painted floor-cloth,
renders your foothold quite precarious. It is like
nothing but a nightmare.

" Mabel was very sick, and her only comfort was
to lie in my berth and take ' strange food ' (which
she immediately returned again) through a spoon
which opens in a very mysterious and interesting
manner out of the handle of a knife which John
Holmes gave me the day we sailed.1 However, she
was up again the next day, and has continued most
devoted in her attendance at table, not to speak of
little supernumerary lunches of crackers and toast
which she contrives to extract from the compassion
of the steward or cook. The galley is a favorite
place of resort for her, to which she retires as one
would to a summer-house, and where, inhaling the
fumes from a cooking-stove of a very warm tem
perament, she converses with the cook (as well as
I can learn) on cosmography, and picks up little
separate bits of geography like disjointed frag
ments of several different dissected maps. With
what extraordinary and thrilling narratives she
repays him I can only guess, but I heard her this
morning assuring Mary that she had seen two
rats, one red and the other blue, running about
the cabin. Indeed, her theories on the subject of

1 In another letter written on shipboard, Lowell refers to the
gift thus : " I held it in especial esteem because it was given in a
way so characteristic of John, who sidled up to me as if he were
asking a favor instead of doing one, and having slipped it into my
hand in a particularly let-not-your-right-hand-know-what-your-
left-hand-doeth kind of manner, instantly vanished and remained
absconded for half an hour.''

312 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

natural history correspond with that era of the
science when Goldsmith wrote his ' Animated Na
ture.' She cultivates her vocal powers by singing
' Jeannette and Jeannot ' with extraordinary vigor,
and with a total irrecognition of the original air,
which may arise from some hereditary contempt of
the French. She assists regularly at ' 'bouting
ship,' as she calls it, standing at the wheel with
admirable gravity. The Captain always takes the
wheel and issues the orders when the ship is put
about, and as this ceremony has taken place pretty
regularly every few hours for the last eight days,
Mabel has acquired all the requisite phrases. At
intervals during the day, a shrill voice may be
heard crying out, ' 'Bout ship ! ' ' Mainsail ha-u-1 ! '
' Tacks and sheets ! ' ' Let go and ha-u-11,' the
whole prefixed by an exceedingly emphatic ' Ha-a-
a-rd a lee ! ! ' There is no part of the vessel except
the hold and the rigging which she has not re
peatedly inspected. With all the sailors she is on
intimate terms, and employs them at odd hours in
the manufacture of various articles of furniture.
. . . Nannie has been a constant source of interest
and amusement to Mabel, who climbs up to visit
her every day fifty times at least, and gives her
little handfuls of hay and oats which Nannie seems
to eat with a particular relish."

The humorous account of the chief mate which
occurs in the section " In the Mediterranean," in
" Leaves from my Journal," is taken from a full
and lively letter written by Lowell a few days later
on shipboard to his brother-in-law, Dr. Estes Howe.

FIFTEEN MONTHS IN EUROPE 313

By that time they were off Tunis. " Perhaps the
finest thing we have seen," he writes to Dr. Howe,
"was the first view of the African coast, which was
Cape Espartel in Morocco. There were five moun
tains in the background, the highest being as tall
as the Catskills, but the outlines much sharper and
grander. They were heaped together as we saw
the Adirondacks from Burlington. We were a
whole day and half the night in beating through
the Straits of Gibraltar, and had very fine views of
the shores on both sides. The little Spanish town
of Tarifa had a great charm for me, lying under a
mountain opposite the Moorish coast, with its now
useless walls all around it. The fires of the char
coal burners on the mountains were exceedingly
picturesque, especially at night, when they gave to
some dozen peaks on both sides the aspect of vol
canoes. Apes Hill, opposite the rock of Gibraltar,
is higher and more peculiar in its forms than the
rock itself. In some views it is almost a perfect
cone, and again, some of the lower peaks, when you
can catch their individual outlines, are pyramidal.
After getting through the Straits, we kept along
the Spanish coast, with very light winds and a new
moon, as far as Cape de Gat. We were four days
in making these 150 miles (we ran 280 miles in
one day on the Atlantic). All along there were
noble mountains, with here and there a little white
town sprinkled along their bases on the edge of the
water like the grains of rice which the girl dropped
in the fairy tale. Sometimes you see larger build
ings on the slope of the mountain, which seem to

314 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

be convents. All are white except the watch-tow
ers, which you see now and then on points, and
these are commonly of a soft brown, the color of
the stone. The hues of the mountains at sunset
and just after were exquisite. The nearer ones
were of a deep purple, and I now understand what
was meant by the Mediterranean atmosphere." . . .

The travellers made a brief halt at Malta,
whence they took steamer to Naples, and from
there went by rail to Florence. There they stayed,
living in the Via Maggio, from the 26th of August
to the 30th of October. Neither in his letters nor
in the sketches which he afterward published
under the title of " Leaves from my Journal in
Italy and Elsewhere " can one find more than a
slight record of Lowell's sojourn in a city which
was especially endeared to him by that study of
Dante which had been his real introduction to the
great world. " I liked my Florentine better than
my Roman walks," he said ; " apart from any dif
ference in the men, I had a far deeper emotion
when I stood on the Sasso dl Dante, than at Hor
ace's Sabine farm, or by the tomb of Virgil ; " 1 for
he found it harder " to bridge over the gulf of
Paganism than of centuries," and the marked in
dividuality of medieval Italian towns attracted
him all the more for their being modern and Chris
tian. In Florence there was an added pleasure in
the companionship of Mr. and Mrs. Frank Shaw,
and in the society of William Page.

In a letter to Mr. John Holmes, written from

1 Leaves from my Journal, Works, i. 213.

FIFTEEN MONTHS IN EUROPE 315

Rome half a year later, Lowell writes : " Once
when I was in Florence, Page and Shaw and I
took a walk out of the city to see a famous Cena-
colo of Andrea del Sarto in the refectory of a sup
pressed convent, about a mile and a half outside
the Porta Santa Croce. We took a roundabout
course among the hills, going first to Galileo's
tower, and then to that of the old Church of San
Miniato which Michelangelo defended. Thence
we descended steeply toward the Arno, crossed it
by a ferry-boat, and then found ourselves oppo
site a trattoria. It was a warm October day,
and we unanimously turned in at the open door.
There were three rooms, one upstairs, where one
might dine ' more obscurely and courageously,' the
kitchen, and the room in which we were. As I
sat upon the corner of the bench, I looked out
through some grape-trailers which hung waving
over the door, and saw first the Arno, then, beyond
it a hill on which stood a villa with a garden laid
out in squares with huge walls of box and a clump
of tall black cypresses in the middle, then, to the
right of this, the ruined tower of San Miniato, and
beyond it that from which Milton had doubtless
watched the moon rising ' o'er the top of Fesole.'
This was my landscape. Behind me was the
kitchen. The cook in his white linen cap was
stirring alternately a huge cauldron of soup and
a pan of sausages, which exploded into sudden
flame now and then, as if by spontaneous com
bustion. A woman wound up at short intervals a
jack which turned three or four chickens before

316 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

the fire, and attended a kind of lake of hot fat in
which countless tiny fishes darted, squirmed, and
turned topsy-turvy in a way so much more active
and with an expression of so much more enjoy
ment than is wont to characterize living fish, that
you would have said they had now for the first
time found their element, and were created to revel
in boiling oil. The wine sold here was the pro
duce of the vineyard which you could see behind
and on each side of the little trattoria. We had
a large loaf of bread, and something like a quart
and a half of pure cool wine for nine of our cents.
During the whole time I was in Florence, though
I never saw any one drink water, I also never saw
a single drunken man, except some Austrian sol
diers, and only four of these — two of them officers.
In Rome, also, drunkenness is exceedingly rare, but
less so, I think, than in Florence. Here you see
everywhere the sign, Spaccio d* Acqua Vitce. In
Florence I never remember to have seen spirits
advertised for sale, except by those who dealt in
the wants of the Forestieri."

Just before leaving the city for Rome, Lowell
was filled with consternation at a letter received
from home, telling him that his father had been
stricken with paralysis. His first impulse was to
take his family to Rome and then return at once
to America, but a little reflection showed him how
useless this would be. " I should never have left
home," he wrote his father from Pisa, where they
had halted on their way to Leghorn, " if I had
not thought that you wished it, or rather wished

FIFTEEN MONTHS IN EUROPE 317

that we should have been abroad and got back. I
hope to find a letter awaiting us at Rome. But at
any rate we shall come home as soon as we can. I
hardly know what I am writing, for I have just got
word from Mr. Black at Leghorn, saying that our
places are engaged on board the steamer for Civita
Vecchia, and that we must be there as soon as pos
sible in the morning. I am going on in the early
train, leaving Maria to come at one o'clock with a
servant from the hotel. It is now between nine
and ten, and the rain still falls heavily. I fear a
bad day to-morrow, and what with that and think
ing about you and home, my mind is confused. I
find nothing abroad which, after being seen, would
tempt me away from Elmwood again. I enjoy the
Art here, but I shall equally enjoy it there in the
retrospect. I wish some of the buildings were on
the other side of the water, but I suppose we should
be more contented not to see them if they were."

The voyage by steamer to Civita Vecchia was a
very rough one, occupying five days instead of the
eleven hours in which it sometimes was made. A
letter from Dr. Howe was received a few days after
the Lowells reached Rome, which gave more exact
account of Dr. Lowell's illness and left little hope
of anything like permanent restoration. " Had it
been possible," Lowell replied to his brother-in-
law, " I should have come home at once. But I
could neither leave Maria here, nor safely expose
her to the inclemencies of a winter passage across
the Atlantic. There is nothing for it, but to hope
and pray. But the thought that I have no right

318 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

to be here casts a deeper shadow over everything
in the dreary city of ruin and of an activity that is
more sad than ruin itself. The dear Elmwood that
has always looked so sunny in my memory comes
now between me and the sun, and the long shadow
of its eclipse follows and falls upon me everywhere.
It is a wonderful satisfaction to me now to feel that
that dear Father and I .have been so much at one
and have been sources of so much happiness to
each other for so many years."

The entrance into Rome is thus described in a
letter to Miss Maria Fay : —

" It has been raining fast, but as we approach
Rome, winding up and down among the hills and
hollows of the Campagna between high stone walls,
the clouds break and the moon shines out with su
preme clearness. The tall reeds which lean over
the road here and there glisten like steel, wet as
they still are with the rain. The orange-trees have
all silver leaves, and even the dark laurels and
cypresses glitter. It is like an enchanted garden
of the Arabian Nights. Presently we overtake
other lumbering diligences (we are posting and
have done the thirty-five miles from Civita Vecchia
in ten hours), and rattling through the gate are
stopped by cocked -hatted officials, who demand
passports. Opposite are the high walls of the In
quisition. We are in Rome. One ought to have
a sensation, and one has. It is that of chill. One
climbs stiffly down from the coupe, and stamps
about with short-skirted and long-booted postilions
whose huge spurs are clanking in every direction.

FIFTEEN MONTHS IN EUROPE 319

Very soon we, being armed with a lascia passare,
— there are three coach loads of us, — drive off,
leaving four other loads behind still wrangling and
jangling with the cocked hats. As we rattle away,
the light from the window of the ujfizio di polizia
gleams upon the musket of a blue overcoated
French soldier marching to and fro on guard.
Five minutes more rattle and the Dome glistens
silverly in the moonlight, and the Titanic colon
nade marches solemnly by us in ranks without end.
Then a glimpse of feathery fountains, a turn to the
right, a strip of gloomy street, a sudden turn to
the left, and we are on the bridge of St. Angelo.
Bernini's angels polk gayly on their pedestals with
the emblems of the Passion in their arms, and by
wringing your neck you may see behind you on the
left the huge castle refusing to be comforted by
the moonlight, with its triumphant archangel just
alighting on its summit. Another sharp turn to
the left, and you are in a black slit of street again,
which at last, after half a mile of unsavoriness, be
comes the Corso, the main street of modern Rome.
And everything thus far is palpably modern, espe
cially the Hotel d'Angleterre, at which we presently
alight. Next day we remove to lodgings already
engaged for us by F. Boott, near the Pincio, in
the highest part of the city. Here we manage to
be comfortable through a month of never-ceasing
rain. Then it clears, and we have a month of
cloudless sunshine, with roses blooming in the gar
dens and daisies in the fields. To-day is the first
rainy day, and I devote it to you."

320 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

The Lowells had their quarters at Capo le Case,
No. 68, on the third piano, and were surrounded
by a few English and American friends. Mr. and
Mrs. Story were not in Rome when they first ar
rived, but joined them in about a fortnight, when
the rains had ceased at last and so permitted walks
in the Campagna. The first part of their stay had
been dreary enough, and drew from Lowell the
whimsical remark : " Sometimes as I look from the
Pincian, I think that the best thing about [mod
ern Rome] is that the hills look like Brighton."
And Mrs. Lowell draws a humorous picture of her
husband, and their half homesick feelings, when
she writes : " Through Mr. Black we have the
English journals and papers, and it really gives
me a little home feeling when I see a bundle of
Examiners and Athenaeums brought in just as
they used to be from Mr. Wells's, and see James
selecting his cigar with particular satisfaction and
giving the fire an express arrangement, and then
drawing up his chair to it and putting his feet on
the fender, beginning to read."

The anxiety, also, which Lowell felt over his
father's illness benumbed his faculties and made
him restless ; but with fair weather, better news
came, and the travellers gave themselves up more
unreservedly to the pleasures which the great city
afforded them. But Rome does not thrill one from
the start. It takes time for its ancient hands to
get that clutch which at last never loosens, and
Lowell at first seemed somewhat unaffected. " I
like," he wrote to his father, just before Christinas,

FIFTEEN MONTHS IN EUROPE 321

" to walk about in the fine sunshine and get unex-

O

pected and unguide-booked glimpses of fine scen
ery, but systematic sight-seeing is very irksome to
me. Though we have been in Rome now nearly
as long as we were in Florence, I have not learned
to like it as well. We were able to enjoy Florence
sincerely and without any reproaches, because we
had not heard of your illness. Then, too, the
churches here are nearly all alike. Going to see
them is like standing to watch a procession of
monks, — the same thing over and over again, and
when you have seen one you have seen all. There
is a kind of clumsy magnificence about them, like
that of an elephant with his castle on his back and
his gilded trappings, and the heaviness somehow
weighs on one. There is no spring and soar in
their architecture as in that of the Lombard
churches I have seen. The Roman columns stand
ing here and there look gentleman-like beside
them, and reproach them with their tawdry parve-
nuism. The finest interior in Rome is that of the
Sta. Maria degli Angeli, which Michelangelo made
out of a single room in the baths of Diocletian.
Even the size of St. Peter's seems inconsiderable in
a city where the Coliseum still stands in crater-like
ruin, and where one may trace the foundations of
a palace large enough almost for a city. . . . Yes
terday I walked out upon the Campagna, but by a
different gate from my favorite San Sebastiano.
Leaving the Porta del Popolo, we followed the
road as far as the Ponte Molle, then turned to
the right on the hither bank of the Tiber, which

322 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

we followed as far as the confluence of the Tiber
and Anio, where was once the city of Antemnae.
As it had been destroyed by Romulus, however,
there was nothing to be seen of the old Sabine
stronghold except the flatiron - shaped bluff on
which it stood, the natural height and steepness of
which, aided no doubt by art, must have made the
storming of it no very agreeable diversion. The
view from the top is very beautiful, and it is a
good place to study the Campagna scenery from, —
I mean the Campagna in a state of nature. Below
us flowed the swift and dirty Tiber, and the yet
swifter and dirtier Anio. In front the Campagna
wallowed away as far as the line of snow-streaked
mountains which wall it in. Herds of cattle and
of horses dotted it here and there, the gray cows
looking like sheep in the distance to an eye used
always to expect red in kine. Sometimes a sort of
square tower rose, lonely and with no sign of life
about it. Looking more carefully, however, it
would turn out to be no tower at all, but only
the cottage of a shepherd perched high above the
inundation of malaria on the top of some ruinous
tomb. Add malaria and the idea of desolation to
an Illinois prairie, and you have the Campagna.
Where Antemna3 had stood there now rose a coni
cal wigwam built wholly of thatch, surmounted by
a cross, at the door of which stood a woman in
scarlet bodice and multitudinous petticoat, with a
little girl ditto, ditto, but smaller. Seeing us get
out a pocket spyglass, a boy of about eighteen
years contrived to muster energy enough to come

FIFTEEN MONTHS IN EUROPE 323

out and stare at us. He was dressed in sheepskin
breeches with the wool on, short wide jacket, red
waistcoat, and hat turned up at the side, and would
have looked extremely well in a landscape — but
nowhere else. A smaller boy came up with more
impetuosity — fat, rosy -cheeked, Puck-like, and
with eyes that looked as if their normal condition
was that of being close-shut, but which once opened
to the width necessary to take in the extraordinary
apparition of three forestieri at once, would re
quire some maternal aid to get back again. Large
hawks were sliding over the air above us, and
there was no sound except the sharp whistle of a
peasant attending a drove of horses in the pasture
below. Jemmy will like to know that the horses
are belled here (I mean in the fields) as cows are
with us, only that the bells are large enough for
a town school. To-night I am going to make the
giro of the churches to see the ceremonies with
which Christmas is ushered in. First an illumina
tion at Santa Maria Maggiore and the cradle of
the Saviour carried in procession at ten o'clock,
then mass at midnight in the San Luigi dei Fran-
cesi, then mass at St. Peter's at three o'clock A. M.
I have not seen a ceremony of the church yet
that was impressive, and hope to be better pleased
to-night."

How he spent his Christmas is told in a letter to
Miss Fay : -

" Let me tell you about Christmas week, first
premising that I go to church ceremonies here
merely that I may see for myself that they are not

324 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

worth seeing. Otherwise they are great bores and
fitter for children. The chief quality of the music
is its interminableness, made up of rises and falls,
and of the ceremonies generally you may take a
yard anywhere as of printed cotton, certain that in
figure and quality it will be precisely like what
has gone before, and what will follow after. On
Christmas eve the Presepio, a piece of the manger
in which the Saviour was cradled, was carried in
procession at the church of Santa Maria Maggiore.
Torches were stuck in the ground for nearly a quar
ter of a mile from the church, and ghostly dragoons
in their long white cloaks (like Leonora's lover)
appeared and vanished at intervals in the uncer
tain light. The interior of the church is fine, but
completely ruined by the trumpery hangings put
up for the occasion. There were ambassadors'
boxes, as at the opera, and rows of raised seats on
each side near the high altar, for such ladies as
chose to come in black, with black veils upon their
heads. I stood among the undistinguished faith
ful, and it being a fast, there was such a smell as
if Wethersfield had been first deluged and then
cooked by subterranean fires. I stood wedged be
tween some very strong devotees (who must have
squandered the savings of a year in a garlic de
bauch) in abject terror lest my head should be
colonized from some of the overpopulated districts
around me.

" At the end of the church I could dimly see the
Pope, with a mitre on and off at intervals. There
was endless Gregorian chanting, then comparative

FIFTEEN MONTHS IN EUROPE 325

silence, with sudden epidemics among the crowd of
standing painfully on tiptoe to stare at nothing ;
then more endless Gregorian chan tings, more epi
demics, and a faint suspicion of frankincense
among the garlic ; then something incomprehensible
performed in dumb show by what seemed automa
ton candles, then an exceedingly slim procession
with the JPresepio, which I could not see for the
simple reason that it was inclosed in a silver case.
At this point the Hallelujahs of the choir were
fine. Having now fairly bagged my spectacle, I
crowded my way out at the risk of my ribs (for
stone doorways are not elastic), and went home to
smoke a cigar preparatory to a midnight excursion
to San Luigi dei Francesi, where, according to
rumor, there was to be fine music. Here I found
more sight-seeing Inglesi, more garlic, more popu
lous neighbors, more endless Gregorian chanting,
more automaton candles, and at midnight a clash
of music from a French band, not so good as our
Brigade Band at home.

"Christmas day, went to St. Peter's to hear
mass celebrated by the Pope in person. Here
were all kinds of antique costumes, — gentlemen in
black velvet doublets with slashed sleeves and
ruffs, other gentlemen in crimson ditto ditto, offi
cers of the Swiss Guard in inlaid corselets, and
privates of ditto in a kind of striped red and yel
low barber's pole uniform invented by Michel
angelo, cardinals, bishops, ambassadors, etc., but
not nearly so large a crowd as I expected. The
music was good, and the whole ended by the Pope's

326 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

being carried through the Basilica blessing the
people at intervals as he went along. I stood
quite near and had a good view of his face. He
looks like a fatter Edward Everett. This is one of
the greatest ceremonies of the year. After it was
over I stood in the piazza watching the equipages
of the cardinals. Speaking of cardinals : I was
walking the other day with an English friend, and
we saw a cardinal coming toward us accompanied
by his confessor and two footmen. Behind fol
lowed his carriage with a cocked-hatted coachman
and another footman. Should we bow ? He was
old enough to deserve it, cardinal or not, so we
bowed. Never did man get such percentage for an
investment. First came off his Eminence's hat.
At a respectful interval came that of the confessor,
at another respectful interval those of the coach
man and footmen. It was like a detachment of
the allied army marching on Dunsinane with a
bough.

" I have spoken rather disrespectfully of the
music here, but I have heard good since I came.
On New Year's day the Jesuits have a great
celebration in the church of the Gesu. I took
a two hours' slice of it in the afternoon. The
music was exceedingly fine, a remarkably well-
trained choir accompanied by the finest organ in
Rome. The soprano was a boy with a voice that,
with my eyes shut, I could not have distinguished
from that of a woman. We are having also,
every Tuesday, concerts by the St. Peter's choir,
with music of Palestrina, Guglielmi, Mozart, etc.

FIFTEEN MONTHS IN EUROPE 327

The music of Palestrina has a special charm for
me, reminding me more than any I ever heard
of the ajolian harp with its dainty unexpected
ness. . . .

"In its modern architecture Rome does not please
me so much as Florence, Pisa, Lucca, or Siena, on
all of which the religion and politics of the Middle
Ages have stamped themselves ineffaceably. The
characteristic of Roman architecture is ostentation,
not splendor, much less grace. Of course I am
speaking generally — there are exceptions. But
even in size the Roman remains dwarf all modern
attempts. . . . There is something epic in the
gray procession of aqueduct arches across the Cam-
pagna. They seem almost like the building of
Nature, and are worthy of men whose eyes were
toned to the proportions of an amphitheatre of
mountains and of a city which received tribute
from the entire world. Exceeding beautiful are
the mountains which sentinel Rome, — the purple
Alban mount, the gray-peaked Monte Gennaro,
the hoary Lionessa, and farther off the blue island-
like Soracte.

" In art also Rome is wondrously rich, especially
in sculpture. For the study of painting I have
seen no gallery like that of the Uffizi at Florence.
And let me advise you, my dear Maria, to see all
the Titians (of which there are many and good) in
England. To me he is the greatest of the paint
ers. This has one quality and that has another,
but he combines more than any. I would rather
be the owner of his ' Sacred and Profane Love ' in

328 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

the Borghese collection than of any single picture
in Rome.1

" What do I do ? I walk out upon the Cam-
pagna, I go to churches and galleries inadvertently
(for I will not convert Italy into a monster exhibi
tion), and I walk upon the Pincio. Here one may
see all the Fashion and the Title of Rome. Here
one may meet magnificent wet-nurses, bareheaded
and red-bod iced, and insignificant princesses Paris-
bonneted and corseted. Here one may see ermine
mantles with so many tails that they remind you
of the Arabian Nights. Here one may see the
neat, clean-shirted, short-whiskered, always-con
ceited Englishman, feeling himself quite a Luther
if he have struggled into a wide-awake hat ; or the
other Englishman with years of careful shaving-
showing unconquerably through the newly-assumed
beard which he wears as unconsciously as Mrs.
Todd might the Bloomer costume for the first time.
Here you may see the American, every inch of
him, from his hat to his boots, looking anxious not
to commit itself. Here you may see all the foreign
children in Rome, and among them Mabel, seem
ing as if her whole diet were capers, and that they
had gradually penetrated and inspired her whole
constitution. I have seen no pair of legs there
which compared with hers either for size or for
untamable activity. Here you may see the worst
riding you can possibly imagine : Italians emulating
the English style of rising in the stirrups and

1 It was more than thirty years later that Lowell wrote the
significant poem suggested by this picture.

FIFTEEN MONTHS IN EUROPE 329

bumping forlornly in every direction ; French offi
cers, reminding one of the proverb of setting a
beggar on horseback, and John Bulls, with super
fluous eyeglass wedged in the left eye, chins run
out over white chokers, and a general upward
tendency of all the features as who should say,
' Regard me attentively but awfully ; I am on inti
mate terms with Lord Fitzpollywog.' On Satur
day evenings we are ' at home.' We have tea,
cake, and friends. . . . The evening before last I
went to a musical party at Mrs. Rich's. You
know what an English musical party is. Your
average Englishman enjoys nothing beyond ' God
save the Queen,' and that because he can either
beat time or swell the chorus with his own private
contribution of discord. But I saw here the dogged
resolution of the people who have conquered Amer
ica and India. There was no shrinking under long
variations on the pianoforte, and I could well im
agine a roast beef and plum-pudding basis under
the solid indifference which outlasted a half-hour's
fiddling. Miss Fanny Erskine, a niece of our host
ess, sang well, especially in German, and Emiliani
is really a fine artist with the violin."

In an earlier letter to Dr. Howe, Lowell had
said : " I begin to think myself too old to travel.
As to men, — as I used to say at home, — the aver
age of human nature to the square foot is very
much the same everywhere ; and as to buildings
and such like monuments, I bring to them neither
the mind nor the eye of twenty. In almost all
such I find myself more interested, as they are

330 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

exponents and illustrations of the spiritual and
political life and progress of the people who built
them. The relations of races to the physical world
do not excite me to study and observation (only
to be fruitfully pursued on the spot) in any pro
portion to the interest I feel in those relations to
the moral advance of mankind, which one may as
easily trace at home, in their history and literature,
as here. But of Rome hereafter. I feel as if I
should continue a stranger and foreigner during
my whole six months' residence here." A month
or so later he revised a little of this judgment in a
letter to his father, in which he wrote : " You need
not be afraid of our getting attached to Europe. I
find the modes of life here more agreeable to me in
some respects, but nothing can replace Elmwood.
In regard to our coming home, the exact time will
depend entirely on the accounts we get of your
health. I do not wish to have the money we have
spent thrown away, for I see no chance of our ever
coming hither again, and so I wish to do every
thing as thoroughly as I can. I have profited al
ready, I think, in the study of art. I make it a
rule now on entering a gallery to endeavor to make
out the painters of such pictures as I like by the
internal characteristics of the works themselves.
After I have made up my mind, I look at my cata
logue. I find this an exceedingly good practice.
Of all the more prominent painters, I can now dis
tinguish the style and motive almost at a glance.
Sometimes I make a particular study of a particu
lar artist, if any gallery is especially rich in his

FIFTEEN MONTHS IN EUROPE 331

works. Life is rather more picturesque here than
with us, and I find that I am accumulating a cer
tain kind of wealth which may be useful to me
hereafter. The condition and character of the
people also interest me much, and I think that
my understanding of European politics will be much
clearer than before my visit to Europe. To under
stand properly, however, requires time and thought
and the power of dissociating real from accidental
causes. I wish to see well what I see at all — and,
if possible, would like to visit Germany, France,
and England before coming home."

The social life of Rome in the English and
American circles engaged the travellers, and Low
ell made his debut as an actor. " Private theat
ricals," he writes his father, 1 February, 1852,
" are all the rage now in Rome. There are three
companies. I have an engagement in one of them
under the management of Mr. Black, who has
erected a pretty enough little theatre in the Pa
lazzo Cini, where he has apartments, — or an apart
ment, as they would say here. We gave our first
representation last Thursday night to a select
audience of English and Americans. Our play
was a portion of Midsummer Night's Dream, in
cluding part of the fairy scenes, and the whole of
the interlude of the clowns. In this interlude, I
was the star, having the part of Bottom assigned
to me. On the morning of Thursday, I wrote a
prologue of some thirty lines which I recited to
open the performances. This, to me, was the
plum of the evening's entertainment. In the first

332 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

place, I do not think that the audience had any
idea that I was a prologue at all, till I had got
nearly through ; for I was obliged to speak it in
the costume of Bottom, not having time to dress
in the interval between the prologue and my first
appearance in character. But even if they guessed
what I was about, it never entered their heads that
it was intended to be funny till about the middle,
when a particularly well-defined pun touched off a
series of laughter-explosions which kept going off
at intervals during the rest of my recitation, as
the train ran along from one mind to another. It
was exceedingly diverting to me, for, knowing the
requisitions of a prologue, I had written it down to
the meanest capacity, and all the jokes were a-b-
abs. I was very much struck with the difference
between an English and an American audience.
The minds of our countrymen are infinitely quicker
both in perception and conception, and I am cer
tain my prologue would have set a room full of
them in roars of laughter."

The list of persons who engaged in these private
theatricals is an interesting one. Mr. Charles C.
Black, to whom Lowell refers, was the begetter
of the entertainment, and with him were W. W.
Story, Charles Hemans, Shakespeare Wood, W.
Temple, J. Hayllar, and T. Crawford. There were
two different representations of " A Midsummer
Night's Dream," and Lowell wrote two separate
prologues. The first began : —

" When Thespis rode upon his one-horse cart,
The first exponent of the Drama's art,

FIFTEEN MONTHS IN EUROPE 333

Earliest of managers, and happiest too,
Having1 a theatre which always drew."

Then followed a comparison of the stationary the
atre with the vagrant one, and the brief prologue
ended with some jests on the actors, as on himself :

" If Pyramus be short, restrain your ire,
Remember none of us appear for hire ; "

and on Crawford : —

" Forgive our Thisbe the moustache she wears,
Ladies, you know, will put on little 'airs."

Story, who was to play Snug, hunted through
Rome for a lion's skin, and finally had to content
himself with the skin of a tiger.

" But now comes one fact I proclaim with glory,
Snug is enacted by our attic Story,
Who sought a lion's hide through Rome, a week,
Quite a new way of playing hide and seek."

In the first representation Lowell had the part
of Pyramus, in the second he was Bottom, and as
he intimates made his new prologue more compre
hensible by his audience. He pretended to have
received a request from Mr. Black to write the
prologue, and so begins : —

" ' Dear Bottom, if you can, I wish you 'd write
A prologue for our comedy to-night ;
Just tap that comic vein of yours which runs
Discharging a continuous stream of puns.' "

And that is what the second prologue consists of,
with some repetition even of the jokes of the first,
ending : —

" Now who plays Pyramns ! no, that won't go well,
I cannot get a good thing out of Lowell.
Faith, that 's too near the truth, it 's past my power,

334 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

For I 've been trying at it half an hour.

At all events I can proclaim with glory

Snug is enacted by our Attic Story ;

Who sought a lion's skin through Home a week,

Quite a nice way of playing hide and seek.

But the last lion that was seen in Rome

Was Dickens, — and he carried his skin home.

Thisbe's moustache. The Greek girls never had any ?

I '11 just remind them of Miss Hairyadne.

But I can't do it. Dite al Signore, —

What 's more I won't — die sono fuori." *

An undercurrent of anxiety and affection for his
father runs through the correspondence at this time,
and a month later he seeks to gratify a grand
father's feelings by devoting a whole letter, written
as clearly as possible that his father might i-ead it
himself, about the sayings and doings of the two
children. " Some theologic questions are begin
ning," he writes, " to vex her [Mabel's] mind some
what. She inquired of me very gravely the other
day, when I said something to her about her Heav
enly Father, ' Papa, have I got a Heavenly Grand
father?' The pictures in the churches make a
great impression (and not always a pleasant one)
upon her. She said to me one day : ' O my dear
papa, I love you so very much, because you take
care of me ; and I love mamma very much because

1 Mr. Black's daughter, Mrs. Hayllar, kindly sends the two pro
logues, which are in a way wholly from memory. Lowell after
wards, she writes, " tore up his notes, saying the lines wore too
insignificant for preservation, -when to his astonishment, my father,
who had a quite remarkable memory, repeated them both to him."
From her own memory Mrs. Hayllar recalled the bits of the first
prologue, and afterward found amongst her father's papers the
whole of the second.

FIFTEEN MONTHS IN EUROPE 335

she takes care of me ; and I love Mary very much
because she takes care of me ; and I love Heavenly
Father because he takes care of me ; and I love
the Madonna very much because she takes care of
me ; and I love the angels because they take care
of me ; and I love that one with the swords stuck
into her, and that other one with the stick.' These
last were no doubt pictures she had seen some
where. During Carnival, we did not let her go to
the Corso much, because there was so much throw
ing of confetti, which are small seeds or pellets of
clay about as large as peas, coated with plaster of
Paris. However, she saw the edges of the great
stream, here and there, as it overflowed into the
side streets, and talked a great deal to Faustina
about Pulcinelli and Pagliacci. She threatened
rather sharply to pay back ' Mister Pulcinello ' (as
she always respectfully called him when she spoke
of him in English) in his own coin, if he threw
any confetti, or oftener, nasty confetti, at her.
One day she was walking with me through the
Piazza di Spagna, with half a roll in her hand,
when she saw one of the lacqueys of the S. P. Q. R.
in his queer costume. She instantly set him down
for a Pulcinello, and I had much ado to hinder
her from hurling the fragment of her roll at him,
much as she once threw a dry bun at somebody
else who shall be nameless. She is making great
progress in Italian under the tuition of Dinda and
Amelia, two nice little girls, daughters of our Pa
drone. One of the great events in her day is
always the pudding — in trattoria Italian il budino.

336 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

As soon as the great tin stiifa has safely made its
descent from the head of the facchino to the floor,
she begins a dance around it, shouting in a voice
loud enough to be heard as far as the Trinita dei
Monti, ' O Faustina, ditemi ! C"e un puddino
Ofjgi ? ' And if it turn out that there be only a
pie, which is a forbidden dolce to her, she forth
with drops her voice to its lowest key and growls
— ' Mi displace molto, mo-o-lto, Faustina ; pu-
dino non ce : ce sono solamente pasticcie."1 Some
times I have heard her add with a good deal of
dignity, ' Dite al cuoco die mi displace molto.'' A
day or two ago, when she saw a plum-pudding
come upon the table, she could not contain herself,
but, springing up into her chair (for she can never
express satisfaction without using her legs — her
intoxications seeming to take direction the reverse
of common), she began dancing and waving her
arms quite like a Bacchanal, at the same time sing
ing -

' Oh, quanto mi piace, roba dolce, il puddino !
Quando lo mangio, sono felice, padrino ! '

I offer this to Jemmy to translate, as an Italian
exercise, for his paper. If it be not equal to
Dante, upon my word I think it quite up to a good
deal of Tasso, and much more to the point than
nine tenths of Petrarca. Improvisations are sel
dom put to the test of being written down, but
this bears it very well. The tender padrino —
Dear little Father — was an adroit bribe, which
got her a third piece of pudding by the unanimous
vote of our household senate. Ask Charlie to

FIFTEEN MONTHS IN EUROPE 337

read over the muddy stuff which Byron thought it
necessary to pump up about St. Peter's, etc., in
* Childe Harold,' and say if he do not agree with me
that his lordship would have made a better hand
of it if he had devoted himself to sincerities like
this? . . .

" As for Walter, he grows and thrives finely.
He can say A, B, C, D, or something considerably
like it — nearer, in fact, a good deal, than the first
four letters of the Chinese alphabet would be. He
has done, during the last week, what I have chal
lenged many older persons to do, namely, cut a
double tooth. I doubt if a cabinet minister in
Europe can say the same of himself. He has
grown very fond of his papa, and sometimes crawls
to my door of a morning before I am out of bed,,
and then, getting upon his feet, knocks and calls
4 Papa ! papa ! ' laying the accent very strongly on
the first syllable. If he hears my voice, he imme
diately springs up in Mary's lap, and begins shout
ing lustily for me. He is the fairest boy that ever
was seen, and has the bluest eyes, and is the bald
est person in Rome except two middle-aged Eng
lishmen, who, you know, have a great knack that
way. ... In a word, he is one of that countless
number of extraordinary boys out of which the
world contrives afterward to make such ordinary
men. I think him rather intelligent — but, as the
picture dealers say, chi sa ? As he is mine, I shall
do rather as the picture-buyers, arid call what I
have got by any name I please. One cannot say
definitely so early. It is hard to tell of a green

338 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

shoot just worming out of the ground whether it
will be an oak or an onion — they all look much
alike at first."

Not an oak, but a plant and flower of light,
Lowell might shortly have said, for this is the last
reference in life to the child suddenly stricken
down and left behind in a Roman grave by the
mourning parents, when, on the 29th of April,
they went away from Rome to Naples with the
one child of their four who lived to them. On
the 13th of the month Lowell wrote to his eldest
sister : " We are now within a fortnight of bid
ding farewell to what I am now forced to call dear
old Rome. In spite of its occupation by an army
of ten thousand French soldiers, in spite of its
invasion by that more terrible force, the column of
English travellers, in spite of the eternal drum
ming and bugling and sentinelling in the streets,
and the crowding of that insular Bull — qui sem
per habet Jbetium in cornu — there is an insensible
charm about the place which grows upon you from
hour to hour. There must be few cities where one
can command such absolute solitude as here. One
cannot expect it, to be sure, in the Colosseum by
moonlight, for thither the English go by carriage
loads to be lonely with a footman in livery behind
them, and to quote Byron's stuff out of Murray's
Guide ; there perch the Erench in voluble flocks,
under the necessity (more painful to them than to
any other people) of being poetical — chattering
Mon Dieu! qiCunjoli effet! But an hour's walk
will take one out into the Campagna, where you will

FIFTEEN MONTHS IN EUROPE 339

look across the motionless heave of the solitude dot
ted here and there with lazy cattle to the double wall
of mountain, the nearest opaline with change of
light and shadow, the farther Parian with snow that
only grows whiter when the cloud shadows melt
across it — the air overhead rippling with larks too
countless to be watched, and the turf around you
glowing with strange flowers, each a wonder, yet so
numberless that you would as soon think of gather
ing a nosegay of grass blades. On Easter Sunday
I spent an incomparable day at the Fountain of
Egeria, stared at sullenly, now and then, by one of
those great gray Campagna bulls, but totally safe
from the English variety which had gone to get
broken ribs at St. Peter's. The show-box unholi-
ness of Holy Week is at last well over. The best
part of it was that on Holy Thursday all the Vati
can was open at once — fifteen miles of incompara
ble art. For me the Pope washed perfumed feet,
and the Cardinal Penitentiary wielded his long rod
in vain. I dislike such spectacles naturally, and
saw no reason why I should undergo every con
ceivable sort of discomfort and annoyance for the
sake of another discomfort or annoyance at the
end. . . .

" The finest show I have seen in Rome is the
illumination of St. Peter's. Just after sunset I
saw from the head of the scalinata, the little points
of light creeping down from the cross and lantern
(trickling, as it were) over the dome. Then I
walked over to the Piazza di San Pietro, and the
first glimpse I caught of it again was from the

340 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

Ponte Sant' Angelo. I could not have believed it
would have been so beautiful. There was no time
or space to pause here. Foot passengers crowding
hither and thither as they heard the shout of
Avanti ! from the coachmen behind — dragoon-
horses getting unmanageable just where there were
most women to be run over — and all the while the
dome drawing all eyes and thoughts the wrong
way, made a hubbub to be got out of as soon as
possible. Five minutes more of starting and dodg
ing, and we were in the piazza. You have seen it
and know how it seems, as if the setting sun had
lodged upon the horizon and then burnt out, the
fire still clinging to its golden ribs as they stand
out against the evening sky. You know how, as
you come nearer, you can see the soft travertine of
the facade suffused with a tremulous golden gloom
like the innermost shrine of a water-lily. And
then the change comes as if the wind had suddenly
fanned what was embers before into flame. If you
could see one, sunset in a lifetime and were obliged
to travel four thousand miles to see it, it would
give you a similar sensation ; but an everyday sun
set does not, for we take the gifts of God as a
matter of course.

" After wondering long enough in the piazza, I
went back to the Pincio (or rather the Trinita dei
Monti) and watched it for an hour longer. I did
not wish to see it go out. To me it seemed better
to go home with the consciousness that it was still
throbbing, as if I could make myself believe that
there was a kind of permanence in it, and that I

FIFTEEN MONTHS IN EUROPE 341

should see it there again some happy evening. Be
fore leaving it, I went away and came back several
times, and at every return it was a new miracle —
the more miraculous for being a human piece of
fairy work.

" Last night there was another wonder, the Gi-
randola, which we saw excellently well from the
windows of the American legation. Close behind
me, by the way, stood Silvio Pellico (a Jesuit now),
a little withered old man in spectacles, looking so
very dry that I could scarce believe he had ever
been shut up in a damp dungeon in his life. This
was (I mean the Girandola) the most brilliant and
at the same time tasteful display of fireworks I
ever saw. I had no idea that so much powder
could be burned to so good purpose. For the first
time in my life I saw rockets that seemed endowed
with life and intelligence. They might have been
thought filled with the same vivacity and enjoy
ment so characteristic of the people. Our rockets
at home seem business-like in comparison. They
accomplish immense heights in a steady straight
forward way, explode as a matter of course, and
then the stick hurries back to go about its terres
trial affairs again. And yet why should I malign
those beautiful slow curves of fire, that I have
watched with Charlie and Jemmie from Simonds's
Hill, and which I would rather see again than
twenty Girandolas ? If Michelangelo had de
signed our fireworks, and if it did not by some
fatal coincidence always rain on the evening of 4th
July, doubtless they would be better."

342 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

Something of the total impression made upon
Lowell in this first visit to Rome may be seen in
the fragment of a letter to Mr. John Holmes, writ
ten near the end of his stay : —

" After all, this is a wonderful place. One feels
disappointed at first, everything looks so modern.
But as the mind, taking in ruin after ruin, gradu
ally reconstructs for itself the grandeur and the
glory, of which these city-like masses are but the
splinters sprinkled here and there by the fall of
the enormous fabric, and conceives the spiritual
which has outlived that temporal domination, and
even surpassed it, laying its foundations deeper
than the reach of earthquake or Gaul, and con
quering worlds beyond the ken of the Roman
eagles in their proudest flight, a feeling of the
sublime, vague and vast, takes the place of the first
hurried curiosity and interest. Surely the Ameri
can (and I feel myself more intensely American
every day) is last of all at home among ruins —
but he is at home in Rome. I cannot help believ
ing that in some respects we represent more truly
the old Roman Power and sentiment than any
other people. Our art, our literature, are, as
theirs, in some sort exotics ; but our genius for
politics, for law, and, above all, for colonization,
our instinct for aggrandizement and for trade, are
all Roman. I believe we are laying the basis of a
more enduring power and prosperity, and that we
shall not pass away till we have stamped ourselves
upon the whole western hemisphere so deeply, so
nobly, that if, in the far-away future, some Gibbon

FIFTEEN MONTHS IN EUROPE 343

shall muse among our ruins, the history of our
Decline and Fall shall be more mournful and more
epic than that of the huge Empire amid the dust
of whose once world-shaking heart these feelings
so often come upon me."

The last week before leaving Rome was spent
in an excursion with Story to Subiaco, as related
at length in " Leaves from my Journal in Italy."
On their way to Naples the Lowells made a halt
at Terracina, from which place Lowell wrote to
Robert Carter : " Here I am, with a magnificent
cliff opposite my window crowned by twelve arches
of what is called the Palace of Theodoric. I have
just come in from seeing the Cathedral, the dirtiest
church I have seen in Italy (with a very pictur
esque old Campanile, however), and the remains of
the old Roman port, which astonished me by their
size even after all I had seen of Roman hugeness.
The port is now rilled with soil, and there is a fine
orange garden wrhere vessels used to lie. Terra
cina is nothing like what I expected to see. The
inn (or 'Grand' Albergo, as it is called) is one of
the least cutthroat looking places I ever saw. It is
quite out of the town, between the great cliff and
the sea. Behind it, on the beach, the scene is quite
Neapolitan — forty or fifty bare-legged fishermen
are drawing a great seine out of the water, and
forty or fifty dirty, laughing, ragged, happily-
wretched children gather round you and beg for
caccosc or cecco, by which they mean qualche cosa.
The women sit round the doors, nasty and con
tented, urging on their offspring in their profes-

344 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

sional career. They are the most obstinate beggars
I have seen yet. In Rome the waving of the two
first fingers of the hand and a decided non c"e is
generally sufficient, but here I tried every expedi
ent in vain. The prickly pear grows bloatedly in
all the ledges of the cliff, an olive orchard climbs
half-way up the back of it where the hill is less
steep, and farther to the left there are tall palms
in a convent garden, but I cannot see them.

" The drive over the Pontine marshes is for more
than twenty miles a perfectly straight, smooth
avenue, between double rows of elms. I had been
told it was very dull, but did not find it so ; for
there were mountains on one side of us, cultivated,
or cattle and horse-covered fields or woods on the
other, and the birds sang and the sun shone all
the way. It seemed like the approach to some
prince's pleasure-house. . . . On the whole, the re
sult of my experience thus far is that I am glad
that I came abroad, though the knowledge one
acquires must rust for want of use in a great mea
sure at home. To be sure, one's political ideas
are also somewhat modified — I don't mean retro
graded."

The progress of the travellers is but briefly re
corded after this. They were in Naples early in
May, and thence they appear to have made their
way to Venice, and to have spent the summer in
leisurely travel through the Italian lakes, Switzer
land, Germany, Provence, and France, reaching
England in the early autumn. Here they saw
London, Oxford, and Cambridge. " We have

FIFTEEN MONTHS IN EUROPE 345

been also," Lowell wrote to his father, " at Ely,
where the cathedral is one of the most interesting
I have seen. I know nothing for which I am more
thankful than the opportunity I have had of seeing
fine buildings. I think they give me a more abso
lute pleasure than anything except fine natural
scenery. Perhaps I should not except even this,
for the sense that it is a triumph of the brain and
hand of man certainly heightens the delight we
feel in them. I think that Ely, more than any
thing else, turned the scale and induced us to stay
a month longer." From London, Lowell made an
excursion with Kenyon to Bath to see Landor, and
thirty-six years later he jotted down some of the
impressions he then received of the man, whose
writings he had long admired.1

A trip followed through England and into Scot
land and Wales, which took in Peterborough, Lin
coln, York, Ripon, Fountains Abbey, Durham,
Edinburgh, and the haunts of Scott, the Scottish
and English lakes, and then the Lowells took
steamer from Liverpool, 30 October, 1852.

1 See " Walter Savage Landor," in Latest Literary Essays and
Addresses, p. 51.

CHAPTER VIII

AN END AND A BEGINNING

1852-1857

LOWELL had the good fortune to have for a com
panion at sea Thackeray, who was on his way to
America to give his lectures on the English Hu
mourists ; he liked the man very much, and his
occasional references to the author in his letters
and critical papers intimate the high regard he
had for his work. Another congenial companion
on shipboard was Arthur Hugh Clough, with whom
he formed a warm and enduring friendship. It
was a thirteen days' passage, and on the 12th of
November the Lowells were again at home in Elm-
wood. The coming of the two Englishmen gave
occasion for many little festivities in Boston and
Cambridge. A glimpse is given of them in Mr.
Longfellow's printed journal, when the poet sum
moned Clough, Lowell, Felton, and C. E. Norton to
feast on some English grouse and pheasant sent
him from Liverpool by Mr. Henry Bright, and in
the evening at the Nortons' there were private
theatricals with a " nice little epilogue written by
Mr. Clough," who shortly established himself in
definitely in Cambridge.

Clough has left a little picture of the interior

AN END AND A BEGINNING 347

of Elmwood : " Yesterday I had a walk with James
Lowell to a very pretty spot, Beaver Brook. Then
I dined with him, his wife, and his father, a fine
old minister who is stone deaf, but talks to you.
He began by saying that he was born an English
man, i. e. before the end of the Revolution. Then
he went on to say, ' I have stood as near to George
III. as to you now ; ' ' I saw Napoleon crowned
Emperor ; ' then, ' Old men are apt to be garrulous,
especially about themselves ; ' ' I saw the present
Sultan ride through Constantinople on assuming
the throne ; ' and so on, — all in a strong clear
voice, and in perfect sentences, which you saw him
making beforehand. And all one could do was to
bow and look expressive, for he could only just
hear when his son got up and shouted in his ear." l
Lowell gave briefly his estimate of dough's genius
when he wrote a few weeks later to Mr. Briggs :
" I wish to write a review of his ' Bothie,' to serve
him in event of a new edition. It is one of the
most charming books ever written, — to my think
ing quite as much by itself as the ' Vicar of Wake-
field.' "

With his European experience behind him Low
ell was eager to plunge into literature, and his
intention at first was to try his hand at fiction,
possibly turning his experience to account some
what after the manner of his neighbor's " Hype
rion." At any rate, Longfellow notes in his diary
under date of 29 November, 1852 : " Met Lowell
in the street and brought him home to smoke a
1 The Poems and Prose Remains of Arthur Hugh Clouyh, i. 188.

348 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

pipe. He had been to the bookseller's to buy a
blank book to begin a Novel, on the writing of
which his mind is bent. lie seems rather sad and
says he does not take an interest in anything.
This is the reaction after the excitement of foreign
travel. Lowell will write a capital novel, and when
he gets warm in the harness will feel happier ; "
and a fortnight later he makes the entry : " Lowell
came in. He has begun his novel."

It is to be suspected that he never went far in
the attempt. A dozen years later, when Mr. Fields
wanted him to write a novel for the Atlantic
Monthly, he made the summary answer : " I can't
write one nor conceive how any one else can." Yet
he could not have abandoned the trial immediately,
for in June he was writing to Briggs : " I have got
so far as to have written the first chapter of a prose
book, — a sort of New England autobiography,
which may turn out well." l

Meanwhile, he was met on his arrival in America
with a piece of literary news which was welcome
for its own sake and because it promised an out
let for his productions. His friend Briggs as
editor-in-chief, with G. W. Curtis and Parke God
win for assistants, was just about launching a new
magazine in New York, which was likely to come
nearer fulfilling the ideal Lowell had long cher-

1 Perhaps his partial friend Briggs was referring to this when
he wrote? 18 March, I860 : " If you bring out that long promised
volume of fireside travels, I hope you will not omit that racy chap
ter of the novel you read to me, but which you will never write.
I think it was much better than anything of the Autocrat's that I
have read."

AN END AND A BEGINNING 349

ished than anything thus far issued in America.
Putnam's Monthly had behind it an active pub
lishing house, whose head, Mr. G. P. Putnam, had
that indefinable quality which makes a publisher,
if not an author himself, a genuine appreciator of
good literature, and a man whose friendship with
authors rested on a basis which was social as well
as commercial. He had shown his sagacity and
business insight by taking up the writings of
Washington Irving when that author was in neg
lect, and winning a substantial success with them.
He cared for the books he published and listened
willingly to Mr. Briggs when that gentleman, who
had been engaged in many editorial enterprises,
argued that the time was ripe for a literary
monthly which should stand for American litera
ture of the best sort, and should at the same time
concern itself with public affairs and furnish also
that miscellaneous entertainment of narrative and
description for which the American public showed
a Irking. Harper s New Monthly Magazine had
been started a couple of years before, but it was
almost wholly a reprint of English current litera
ture, and even its cover was a copy of Bentley's.
It had, however, struck a popular taste, and its
success made other publishers jealous, while its easy
use of foreign matter made the men of letters
angry.

The prospectus of Putnam s Monthly, in which
the fact that it was to be " an entirely original
work " was emphasized, announced that it was " in
tended to combine the more various and amusing

350 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

characteristics of a popular magazine with the
higher and graver qualities of a quarterly review,"
and that when a subject needed illustrations or pic
torial examples, such illustrations would occasion
ally be given. The rate of payment was fair for
the time: poetry had no fixed rates, but Lowell
received fifty dollars for a poem of two hundred
and fifty lines or so, and prose was paid at the rate
of three dollars a page. Hawthorne and Emerson
were among those who promised their work, though
neither seems to have contributed, but Longfel
low printed several poems. The articles and
poems were all unsigned. The early numbers gave
good promise, and Curtis, with his " Prue and I "
papers gave a distinction of lightness and added
the flavor which every literary magazine covets but
can rarely command. The first number, Briggs
declared with elation, had run up to twenty thou
sand copies, and the second number had one of
those articles, " Have we a Bourbon among us ? "
which are the joy of the magazine editor for the
buzz which they create in the reading community.
But the high hopes with which Putnam's started
out somehow faded. There were exceptionally
good poems and the general average of writing
was high, but the magazine soon satisfied curiosity
without creating a demand, and the financial em
barrassment of the publisher after two years com
pelled a transfer of the publishing interest which
was followed by a steady decline in quality.

Meanwhile, Mr. Briggs looked eagerly to Lowell
for help, and for his first number received the

AN END AND A BEGINNING 351

poem " The Fountain of Youth," which had been
lying in the poet's portfolio for three years. He
suggested that Lowell should publish " The Noon
ing " as a serial. This was not to be, but whether
from this suggestion or not, Lowell suddenly took
it into his head to start a serio-comic poem in
Alexandrines, under the heading " Our Own, his
Wanderings and Personal Adventures," in which
he intended to personate a correspondent of the
magazine, who should travel in Europe, and em
ploy his nonsense and satire on men and things.
He began leisurely enough, heading his page with
a Greek, a Latin, and an English motto, each clev
erly hinting at the plan and the name of the piece.
The Latin " Quce regio in terris Nostri non plena
labor is ? " was Englished in

" Full many cities he hath seen and many great men known ;
What place on earth but testifies the labors of our own ? "

Then he makes a doggerel verse under Digression
A which slyly imitates Spenser's verse table-of-
contents, and so with Digressions, Invocation, and
Progression he saunters carelessly along. " The
last few days," he writes to Briggs, 17 February,
1853, " I have worked in earnest. I wrote one
hundred and fifty lines yesterday, and it is thought
funny by the constituency in my little Buncombe
here. I have hopes that it will be the best thing
I have done in the satiric way after I once get
fairly agoing. I am thus far taking the run back
for the jump. I have enlarged my plan and, if
you like it, can make it run through several num
bers. It is cruel, impudent, — sassy, I meant to

352 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

write. Some parts of it I have flavored slightly
with Yankee, — but not in dialect. I wish to make
it something more than ephemeral, and shall put
more thinking into it as I go along. My idea for
it is a glass of punch, sweetness, sourness, spirit,
and a dash of that Chinese herb favorable to medi
tation."

There were three numbers only published of
" Our Own," though the last carried the legend
" To be continued " at its foot. The perplexed
editor hardly knew how to answer Lowell's de
mand for criticism. He himself was immensely
entertained, he averred, but nobody else was ; al
though he had heard of one or two, and Lowell
added the names of two or three more, it was clear
to Mr. Briggs that the verses did not take, and he
grew petulant over the stupidity of the public.
Lowell's own ardor cooled. The style of composi
tion was indeed to real writing what the pun is to
real wit. In the heat of firing off these fire-crack
ers, ever so much execution seems to be done, but
the laugh that follows is not repeated, and the
cleverness and point seem dulled when the bris
tling jests crowd each other, giving no relief to
each.

Lowell could not quite agree with Briggs in the
deference which the latter was disposed to pay to
the expressions of the public upon the contents of
his magazine : " I doubt if your magazine," he
writes, " will become really popular if you edit it
for the mob. Nothing is more certain than that
popularity goes downward and not up (I mean per-

AN END AND A BEGINNING 353

manent popularity), and it is what the few like now
that the many have got to like by and by. Now
don't turn the tables on me and say that, — not the
very few. I have pretty much given up the notion
that I can be popular either upward or downward,
and what I say has no reference to myself. I wish
I could be. But it strikes me that you want as
much variety as possible. It is not merely neces
sary that the matter should be good, but that it
should be individual."

A good many years afterward when Lowell was
making up a volume of poems, he looked again at
" Our Own " to see if it was worth preserving, and
out of the whole six hundred lines he saved only
the verses now headed " Fragments of an Unfin
ished Poem " and the two charming stanzas " Alad
din." l The insertion of this little poem in the
midst of his nonsense indicates that if Lowell had
found sufficient encouragement he might, especially
after reaching Europe in his plan, have worked off
the surplusage of high spirits and thrown into his
rambling discourse both caustic satire and genial
humor.

A more satisfactory and successful contribution
which was enthusiastically received by the editor
was " A Moosehead Journal," which was in effect
a journal, sent home to his wife, of an excursion
made by Lowell in the summer of 1853 with his
nephew Charles ; and in the spring of 1854 ap-

1 The lines on pp. SO, 81, of " Cambridge Thirty Years Ago "
are also saved from the same poem, but from the imprinted por
tion.

354 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

peared in two parts the well-known sketch of
" Cambridge Thirty Years Ago," under the title,
" Fireside Travels." The paper seems to have
grown out of an unused sketch of Allston which
Lowell had begun for Putnam's in September,
1853. " What I have written (or part of it)," he
says to the editor, " would make a unique article
for your magazine, if the other thing is given up.
It is a sketch of Cambridge as it was twenty-five
years ago, and is done as nobody but I could do it,
for nobody knows the old town so well. I mean
one of these days to draw a Commencement as it
used to be." Lowell does not appear to have con
tributed to Putnam's after December, 1854, when
his portrait, an engraving by Hall after Page's
painting, served as frontispiece to the number,
being one of a series of portraits of contributors
to the magazine.

Meanwhile, when Putnam's was at the top of its
brief tide, another attempt at a good literary maga
zine was made in Boston. The extraordinary suc
cess of " Uncle Tom's Cabin " had emboldened its
publisher, Mr. John P. Jewett, to undertake what
its projector, Mr. F. H. Underwood, called a " Lit
erary and Anti-Slavery Magazine." It was the in
tention to issue the first number in January, 1854,
and to use the great reputation of Mrs. Stowe to
float it by printing a new novel by her. Mr. Under
wood1 was particularly desirous of securing Low
ell's aid, especially as he esteemed his poetry quite

1 See his two letters to T. W. Higginson, outlining his plan, and
published by the latter in his Old Cambridge.

AN END AND A BEGINNING 365

the best to be had in America, and he was elated
at receiving from him the poem " The Oriole's
Nest," afterward called simply " The Nest." But
the design which had been germinating for two
or three years was suddenly brought to naught
by the failure of the luckless publishers, whose
success with " Uncle Tom's Cabin " seems to have
been thrust upon them, rather than to have been
due to their business ability. So a fortnight after
sending his poem, Lowell was forced to write the
disconcerted editor : " I cannot help writing a
word to say how truly sorry I was to hear of the
blowing up of your magazine. But it is not so
irreparable as if it had been a powder-magazine,
though perhaps all the harder to be borne because
it was only in posse and not in esse. The explo
sion of one of those Castles in Spain sometimes
sprinkles dust on all the rest of our lives, but I
hope you are of better heart, and will rather look
upon the affair as a burning of your ships which
makes victory the more imperative. Although I
could prove by a syllogism in barbara that you are
no worse off than you were before, I know very
well that you are, for if it be bad to lose mere
coin, it is still worse to lose hope, which is the mint
in which most gold is manufactured.

" But, after all, is it a hopeless case ? Consider
yourself to be in the position of all the world be
fore the Mansion of our Uncle Thomas (as I sup
pose we must call it now, it has grown so respect
able) was published, and never to have heard of
this Mr. Jew-wit. I think he ought to be — that

356 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

something ought to be done for him : but for that
matter nearly all booksellers stand in the same
condemnation. There are as good fish in that buc
caneering sea of Bibliopoly as ever were caught,
and if one of them has broken away from your
harpoon, I hope the next may prove a downright
kraaken, on whom, if needful, you can pitch your
tent and live.

" Don't think that I am trifling with you. God
knows any jests of mine would be of a bitter sort
just now ; but I know that it is a good thing for a
man to be made to look at his misfortune till it
assumes its true relations to things about it. So
don't think me intrusive if I nudge your elbow
among the rest."

A few weeks after the return of the Lowells to
America, Longfellow took Clough on a walk to
Elmwood. " Lowell," he says, " we found musing
before his fire in his study. His wife came in,
slender and pale as a lily." In reading " A Year's
Life " one is struck by the frequency with which
the shadow of death falls across the page. It is
true that when he wrote the poems, when indeed
he fell in with Maria White, Lowell was strug
gling out of an atmosphere which was full of damp
mist, and the image of death naturally rose con
stantly before him. Yet it remains that from the
beginning of his passion he associated this love
with the idea of death. So frail, so almost ethereal
was the woman who came thus into his life, that
from the first he was constantly sheltering her

AN END AND A BEGINNING 357

from the cold blast. The solicitude deepened his
passion ; it accustomed him at the same time to
the idea of transitoriness in the life he led. It is
entirely possible, nay, very probable, that this
spiritually-bodied girl was permitted to develop
into a gracious womanhood through the very fact
of her marriage and her motherhood : Lowell's
own mood during the nine years of married life
was, as we have seen, often irrepressibly gay and
sanguine, and after the death of each of their chil
dren the two seemed to spring back into a whole
some delight in life. Still, the fear could never
have long been out of their minds, and, after Wal
ter died in Rome, the mother seems steadily to
have drooped. When Lowell sent " The Nest "
to Underwood, he speaks of it as an old poem :
" Perhaps," he says, " it seems better to me than
it deserves, for an intense meaning has been added
to it." The meaning had then indeed been deep
ened, but when it was written, there was more than
remote prophecy in the lines —

" When springs of life that gleamed and g-ushed
Run chilled, and slower, and are hushed."

The year that passed after the return from
Europe saw Mrs. Lowell declining in strength,
though it was not till September, 1853, that his
letters betray Lowell's deepening anxiety, and it
was not till the end of the month that he fully
realized the progress disease had made. Mrs.
Lowell died 27 October, and Lowell was left alone
with his little daughter. The visionary faculty,
which all his life had been what might almost be

358 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

called another sense, came now to his help and for
awhile he lived as if the companion of thirteen
years, though shut out from his daily sight, visited
him in the solitude and silence of the night. " I
have the most beautiful dreams," he writes, " and
never as if any change had come to us. Once I
saw her sitting with Walter on her knee, and she
said to me, ' See what a fine strong boy he is
grown.' And one night as I was lying awake and
straining my eyes through the gloom, and the pal
pable darkness was surging and gathering and
dispersing as it will, I suddenly saw far, far off a
crescent of angels standing and shining silently.
But oh ! it is a million times better to have had
her and lost her, than to have had and kept any
other woman I ever saw."

It had given both husband and wife a great
pleasure to see one and another of Mrs. Lowell's
poems printed during the last year in Putnam's
Monthly, Mr. Briggs, with his affectionate regard
for both, was eager to print the verses as they were
sent him, and reported all the agreeable words that
came to him respecting the poems. The latest to
be printed was one on Avignon, in which the poet
kept turning back from the historic and spectac
ular sights to some oleanders which stood by her
window. " How beautiful it was," Lowell wrote
to Briggs, " and how fitting for the last. -I am
going to print them all — but not publish them yet
— she did not wish it. I shall give a copy, with a
calotype from a drawing which Cheney is to make
from Page's picture, to all her friends."

AN END AND A BEGINNING 359

It was a year and more before the volume was
printed, bearing the title "The Poems of Maria
Lowell," and inscribed to Mrs. Story, Mrs. Put
nam, and Mrs. Shaw, three friends of whose lov
ing appreciation Lowell had had many assurances.
There are only twenty poems in the volume. Most
had been printed before, one, " The Morning-
Glory," in Lowell's own collection. None of her
translations were included. One looks naturally
in such a volume rather for intimations of the
writer's character, and for touches of personal
feeling, than for poetic art. Mrs. Lowell herself
plainly had but a humble conceit of her poetic
gift, and it does not appear that poetry was an
abundant resource with her. But art there is of
no mean order in this little book. It is a delicate
instrument on which she plays ; there are not many
stops, but there is a vibrant tone which thrills the
ear. Tenderness indeed is the prevailing note, but
in one poem, "Africa," there is a massiveness of
structure, and a sonorous dignity of measure which
appeal powerfully to the imagination. The poems
have, here and there, an autobiographic value.
One written in Rome, shortly after the travellers
had reached that city and the dream of childhood
had come true, ended with the verses : —

" And Rome lay all before us in its glory,

Its glory and its beautiful decay,
But, like the student in the oft-read story,
I could have turned away,

" To the still chamber with its half-closed shutter
Where the beloved father lay in pain,

360 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

To sit beside him in contentment utter,
Never to part again."

There are four sonnets in which her love for her
husband glows with a deep, steady passion, one of
them written doubtless in the solemn days near
the end, in the spirit recorded by Lowell when he
wrote to Briggs after her death : " She promised
to be with me if that were possible."

" In the deep flushing of the Western sky
The new moon stands as she would fain be gone,
And, dropping earthward, greet Endymion :
If Death uplift me, even thus should I,
Companioned by the silver spirits high,
And stationed on the sunset's crimson towers,
Bend longing over earth's broad stretch of bowers,
To where my love beneath their shades might lie :
For I should weary of the endless blue,
Should weary of my ever-growing light,
If that one soul, so beautiful and true,
Were hidden by earth's vapors from my sight,
Should wane and wane as changeful planets do,
And move on slowly, wrapt in mine own night."

What most impresses the reader who takes all
these poems at a sitting is the reserve, the just
balance of sentiment which controls them. Pas
sion is here, but it is not stormy, and love and
tenderness, but they are not feeble and tearful.
Depth of feeling and strength of character lie open
to view in the firm lines, and the fine light and
shade of the verse come incontrovertibly from a
nature evenly poised, whose companionship must
have been to Lowell that of a kindred spirit, capa
ble indeed of guiding and not merely of seconding
his resolves.

Mrs. ,1 fa /•/'<! II '/titt- Lowell

AN END AND A BEGINNING 3G3

affectionate child. True, all the losses he had suf
fered seemed now to be but the messengers of a
final disaster. " I have only one lamb left of
four," he wrote to an occasional correspondent,
" and think I hear the foot of the inexorable wolf
if a leaf rustle ; " but as the days went by this sen
sitiveness subsided. He was fortunate in having
for her a most admirable governess, and he found
the child's companionship an unfailing joy. " I
said as I sat down to dinner," he writes in one of
his letters ; " ' This is a rare day, I have positively
had an idea.' Not knowing the meaning of ' idea,'
and I being in the habit of telling her (when she
is hypt, no rare thing) that she has some disease to
which I give a very hard name, — she thought I was
joking, and said, ' Nonsense, papa, you have n't
got an idea,' — evidently thinking it some terri
ble complaint. ' Why, should n't you like a papa
that had ideas ? ' She threw her arms round my
neck and said : ' You dear papa ! you 're just the
kind of papa that I love ! ' " Mabel," he writes
again, " has just begun to have ' Robinson Crusoe '
read to her. Think of that and burst with envy !
What have you and I left in life like that? She
has already arranged a coronet of feathers, and
proposes to play Indian Chief in future. Her
great part lately has been the Great Wild Goat of
the Parlor, — produced every evening with un
bounded applause, especially from the chief actor.
With a pair of newspaper horns she chases her
father (who knows what it is to be tossed on the
horns of the newspapers), qualifying his too exces-

364 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

sive terrors with a kiss at last to show that it is
really not real, but only play. . . . She has been in
the habit of hearing her grandfather always say,
4 If Providence permit,' of course not knowing what
it meant. But one day, having made an uncom
monly successful slide, she turned triumphantly to
her aunt and cried, ' There, tJiat time I went like
Providence permit/ The doctor ordered her a
blanket bath. She had already tried one and said,
' If you please, papa, I had rather not.' * But, dar
ling, most people like them very much.' * Well,
papa, 7 don't ; people have different tastes you
know. I 've often noticed that everybody has a
different mind.' '

Added to the need of wresting his mind from
the despondency of grief was the pecuniary pres
sure, lie had an income at this time from such
little property as he possessed of six hundred dol
lars a year, and that plainly would not suffice. So
he shook his portfolio, and even began writing new
poems which he sent to his friend Briggs for Put-
nanis, and he set about working over the letters he
had written in Italy, publishing thorn in Graham »
Magazine, under the title "Leaves from my Ital
ian Journal." It was easier to do such mechanical
work as this, and he began to speculate on the pos
sibility of editing Shakespeare, .and meditated a
life of Dean Swift. He did during 1854 edit
Marvell for the series of British Poets which his
friend Professor Child was preparing for Little,
Brown & Co., expending a good deal of loving care
on the text, and editing Henry Kogers's brief me-

AN END AND A BEGINNING 305

moir by omissions, illustrations from Marvell's
writings, and a slight addition. He wrote also at
this time, for use in the same series, the brief
sketch of Keats which afterward he placed with
his collected essays. As an introduction to Keats's
poems, it was designedly more biographical than
critical, and did little more than set forth in a
lively fashion the facts gathered by M lines.
When one considers Lowell's early appreciation
of Keats, it seems a little singular that he should
have contented himself with so slight an expres
sion.

Lowell spent the last week of June, 1854, at
Newport, R. I., on a visit to the Nortons, and then
went for the summer to Beverly, chiefly to be near
his sister, Mrs. Charles Lowell. At this time the
north shore of Massachusetts Bay had all the
charm of rock and beach which it now has, with a
pristine simplicity of life which it has lost. To
day the visitor drives through the woods near Bev
erly by well-kept roads, meeting at every turn other
carriages and pleasure parties. Then, the woods
were as beautiful, but had unbroken solitude. " At
Newport," Lowell wrote to Miss Norton, " you have
no woods, and ours are so grand and deep and
unconverted ! They have those long pauses of con
scious silence that are so fine, as if the spirit that
inhabits them were hiding from you and holding
its breath, — and then all the leaves stir again, and
the pines cheat the rocks with their mock surf, and
that invisible bird that haunts such solitudes calls
once and is answered, and then silence again."

366 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

A letter to Mr. Norton, dated 14 August, 1854,
hints at the restful character of this seaside so
journ. " This is an outlying dependency of the
Castle of Indolence, and even more lazy, — in pro
portion as the circulation is more languid at the
extremities. By dint of counting on my fingers,
and with the aid of an old newspaper and an alma
nac, I have approximated, I believe, to the true
date of your world out there, and that seems to me
quite a sufficient mental achievement for one morn
ing. The chief food of the people here is Lotus.
It is cunning to take various shapes, — sometimes
fish, sometimes flesh, fowl, eggs, or what not, — but
is always Lotus. It does not make us forget, only
Memory is no longer recollection, it is passive, not
active, and mixes real with feigned things, just as
in perfectly still pools the images of clouds filter
down through the transparent water and make one
perspective with the matter-of-fact weeds at the
bottom. I feel as if I had sunk in a diving-bell
provisioned and aired for three months, and knew
not of storm or calm, or of the great keels, loaded,
perhaps, with fate, that sigh hoarsely overhead
toward their appointed haven. . . .

" What do I do ? Tarry at Jericho chiefly.
Also I row and fish, and have learned to under
stand the life of a shore fisherman thoroughly.
Sometimes I get my dinner with my lines, — a rare
fate for a poet. Sometimes I watch the net result
when the tritons draw their seine. Also I grow
brown, and have twice lost and renewed the skin
of my hands and, alas, my nose. Also I know

AN END AND A BEGINNING 367

what hunger is and, reversing the AVordsworthian
sheep, am one feeding like forty."

He went on one or two short cruises and enjoyed
the genuine country life with its salt flavor, but
was back at Elmwood in the fall. The year had
found some intimate expression in his verse, as
well as the more objective poems like " Pictures
from Appledore," suggested in part it may be by
one of his summer cruises, though the last section
was written four years before. Mr. Stillman, who
made his acquaintance at this time, when he was
foraging for The Crayon, the new literary and art
journal which his enthusiasm had projected, speaks
warmly of the princely courtesy with which Lowell
received him. " Out of the depth of the shadow
over his life," he writes,1 " in the solitude of his
study, with nothing but associations of his wrecked
happiness permitted around him, the kindly sym
pathy with a new aspiration wakened him to a
momentary gaiety, his humor flashed out irrepressi
ble, and his large heart turned its warmest side to
the new friend, who came only to make new calls
on his benevolence ; that is, to give him another
opportunity to bestow himself on others." On his
part, Lowell welcomed heartily this ingenuous lover
of art and letters. They took long walks together
over the country Lowell knew so well, to Beaver
Brook, the Waverley Oaks, and the Waltham hills.
" You made me fifteen years younger," he wrote,
" while you stayed. When a man gets to my age,

1 " A Few of Lowell's Letters " in The Old Rome and the New
and other Studits, p. 134.

368 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

enthusiasms don't often knock at the door of his
garret. I am all the more charmed with them
when they come. A youth full of such pure inten
sity of hope and faith and purpose, what is he but
the breath of a resurrection-trumpet to stiffened
old fellows, bidding us up out of our clay and earth
if we would not be too late ? "

The poems which register the tranquillity of a
return to common life, like " The Windharp " and
" Auf Wiedersehen," are tremulous with the emo
tion which he could bear to express. Indeed, when
Lowell came to print the former of these poems he
omitted one stanza, possibly as going farther than
he cared to with his contemporaneous public. In
the letter last quoted, he sent it to Mr. Stillman.

" O tress that so oft on my heart hath lain,
Rocked to rest within rest by its thankful beating,
Say, which is harder, — to bear the pain
Of laughter and light, or to wait in vain,
'Neath the unleaved tree, the impossible meeting ?
If Death's lips be icy, Life gives, iwis,
Some kisses more clay-cold and darkening than his ! "

But as a comprehensive record of this whole expe
rience, the " Ode to Happiness " written at this
time may be taken as most conclusive. The very
form of the ode, a form to which Lowell was wont
to resort in the great passages of his life, aided the
expression, for its gravity, its classic reserve, even
its labored lines served best to hold that sustained
mood which impelled the poet to stand as it were
before an altar and make his sacrificial hymn.
Tranquillity, he avers, is the elder sister of Happi
ness. " She is not that," he says : —

AN END AND A BEGINNING 369

" She is not that for which youth hoped.
But she hath blessings all her own,
Thoughts pure as lilies newly oped,
And faith to sorrow given alone :

' I am she
Whom the gods love, Tranquillity :

That other whom you seek forlorn

Half earthly was : but I am born
Of the immortals, and our race
Wears still some sadness on its face :

He wins me late, but keeps me long,
Who, dowered with every gift of passion,
In that fierce flame can forge and fashion

Of sin and self the anchor strong ;
Can thence compel the driving force
Of daily life's mechanic course,
Nor less the nobler energies
Of needful toil and culture wise ;
Whose soul is worth the tempter's lure,
Who can renounce, and yet endure,
To him I come, not lightly wooed,
But won by silent fortitude.' " 1

From this time forward, however he might be
subject to transient moods, as one with so much
sensibility would inevitably be, Lowell was yet
free from the violent and tempestuous fluctuations
of mood which heretofore had marked his course.
The first desolation over, that influence which dur
ing Mrs. Lowell's lifetime had always been ac
companied by the dark shadow of a threatened
loss, now became, paradoxical as the phrase may
be, peramanent and profound. No human accident
could affect it, and as Lowell's own powers had
passed through the experimental stage, there came

1 The poem was not printed till April, 1858, when it appeared
in The Atlantic Monthly.

370 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

a steadiness of aim and a maturity of expression
which thenceforth were registered in successive
sure and firm-footed performances. It may truly
be said that Lowell had now found himself, and
that from this period dates the full orbit of a
course which had heretofore been more or less ec
centric, but now could be reasonably calculated.
Surprises there were to be, but surprises of excel
lent achievement, rather than of new ventures.

It is therefore with special interest that one notes
the character of the work which occupied Lowell in
this eventful season of 1854-1855. Some time be
fore he had been asked by his kinsman who directed
the Lowell Institute to give a course of lectures
before it, and had been paid in advance ; he had
made some movement toward preparation, but now
he set about it in earnest, and began the delivery
9 January, 1855. There were to be twelve lectures,
and he was to discourse on poetry in general and
English poetry in particular. Something of the
exhilaration with which he entered upon the engage
ment may be seen in a note written to Mr. Norton
three days before the first lecture, and inclosing a
ticket to the course.

" This will admit you to one of the posti dis-
iinti to witness the celebrated tableau vivant of
the sacrifice of Iphigenia (Iphigenia, by particu
lar request, Mr. J. R. Lowell). It is well known
that this interesting ceremony was originally per
formed for the sake of raising the wind, and Mr.
L. will communicate a spirit of classic reality to
the performance by going through it with the same
end in view.

AN END AND A BEGINNING 371

"I write this by the hand of an amanuensis
whom I have had in my employment for some
time, and who has learned how to catch my ideas
without my being obliged to speak — a great gain.

" (A great gain indeed ! the greatest bore in the
world ! He thinks I am writing what he dictates
at this moment because he hears the pen scratch.
He pretends to be a good-natured fellow — but if
you only knew him as I do ! He has no more feel
ing than a horseradish.)

" I should have come last Saturday to Shady
Hill — but you may guess how busy I have been.
(It is / who have had all the work, and only my
board and tobacco for wages : he pretend to hate
slavery !)

" I have only just got the flood on, and feel as if
I might deliver a course that will not disgrace me.

" (I almost hope they will, for what right has he
to keep me shut up here ? I get no walks, and he
begins to keep me awake at nights with his cursed
ideas as he calls them. What is an idea, I should
like to know ?)

" I have only one private entrance ticket to
spare — but I suppose you do not want any more.

" Give my best regards and happy New Years
and all kinds of things at Shady Hill (and mine,
too ; how mad he 'd be if he knew I put that in).
" Always yours,

" The Amanuensis of J. R. Lowell, esquire."

Two days after giving the first lecture, Lowell
wrote to Stillman : —

372 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

" I have been so fearfully busy with my lec
tures ! and so nervous about them, too ! I had
never spoken in public, there was a great rush for
tickets (the lectures are gratis), only one in five
of the applicants being supplied — and altogether
I was taken quite aback. I had no idea there
would be such a desire to hear me. I delivered
my first lecture to a crowded hall on Tuesday
night, and I believe I have succeeded. The lec
ture was somewhat abstract, but I kept the audi
ence perfectly still for an hour and a quarter.
(They are in the habit of going out at the end
of the hour.) I delivered it again yesterday after
noon to another crowd,1 and was equally successful
— so I think I am safe now. But I have six yet to
write, and am consequently very busy and pressed
for time. I felt anxious, of course, for I had a
double responsibility. The lectures were founded
by a cousin of mine, and the trustee is another
cousin — so I wished not only to do credit to my
self and my name, but to justify my relative in
appointing me to lecture. It is all over now —
and, as far as the public are concerned, I have suc
ceeded ; but the lectures keep me awake and make
me lean."

1 It was the custom when there was an unusual demand for
tickets, for the lecturer, besides his Tuesday and Friday evening
discourses, to repeat them on Wednesday and Saturday after
noons. In those days also, applicants for tickets registered their
names during a certain number of days in advance, and at the
close of the registry notification was made that persons holding
numbers divisible by two, three, four, or five, as the case might
be (in the ratio of applicants to the number of seats in the hall),
might call and receive tickets.

AN END AND A BEGINNING 373

Mr. Longfellow was a very interested auditor,
and his diary bears witness to the attention which
he gave to the course : —

" January 8, 1855. Lowell came in the even
ing and we talked about his lectures on poetry
which begin to-morrow.

"January 9. Mr. Richard Grant White, of
New York, author of ' Shakespeare's Scholar,'
came to tea. He drove in with us to hear Low
ell's first lecture : an admirable performance, and
a crowded audience. After it, we drove out to
Norton's, where, with T. and the lecturer, we had
a pleasant supper.

" January 20. Lowell's lecture, on the old Eng
lish ballads, one of the best of the course."

Charles Sumner appears also to have been one
of the auditors. At any rate, he wrote to Longfel
low from Washington, 6 February, 1855 : " Low
ell's lecture on Milton lifted me for a whole day.
It was the utterance of genius in honor of genius."

Mr. Fields asked Lowell for the lectures for
publication, but he put him off " till they were
better," and never published them. They were
reported at the time by Lowell's old friend, Robert
Carter, in the Boston Daily Advertiser, and some
time after Lowell's death these reports were gath
ered into a volume and printed privately for the
Rowfant Club of Cleveland, Ohio.

The form in which the lectures were reported,
sometimes direct, sometimes indirect, undoubtedly
robs them of some of the charm which the hearers
acknowledged, but enough remains to give one a

374 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

tolerably clear impression of Lowell's mode of
treatment. The first lecture was occupied with
definitions, and in a familiar way Lowell set about
distinguishing poetry from prose, and by a variety
of illustrations gave some notion of the great op
erations of the imagination. Having cleared the
way, he took up the consideration of English poetry
in the historical order, dealing with the forerun
ners, Piers Ploughman's Vision, the Metrical Ro
mances, and the Ballads ; and then devoting one
lecture each to Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, Butler,
and Pope. The discussion of Pope led him to inter
rupt himself, and in the next lecture take up the
subject of Poetic Diction, for after expressing his
admiration of the consummate art of Pope's arti
ficiality, he wished to inquire whether there might
not be a real, vital distinction between the lan
guage of prose raised to a high degree of metrical
efficiency and the language of poetry. His readers
will recall the amusing passage in an article on
" Swinburne's Tragedies," in which, when wishing
to illustrate the Greek battledoor and shuttlecock
style of dialogue, he finds it easier to make a bur
lesque imitation than to hunt up some passage in
Sophocles. In like manner he invents a piece of
descriptive verse — a Lapland sketch — as an in
stance of the artificial manner brought in by Pope,
but lacking his wonderful manipulation of lan
guage. It is a felicitous example of Lowell's imi
tative faculty, which led him, when he began to
write, to throw off lines in Burns's manner, but
which never betrayed him when he was in earnest

AN END AND A BEGINNING 375

in poetry. The imitation was in itself a criticism.
He liked to emphasize the essential element of
poetry by instancing the empty form. Mr. Dante
Rossetti once overpowered nie by producing a thin
volume of verse by T. H. Chivers, M. D., and
reading aloud from it and demanding information
about the author. When I applied to Lowell
afterward, he said that Dr. Chivers had been wont
to send him his books, and he read them aloud to
his classes as illustrations of the shell of Shelley.
A lecture followed on Wordsworth, and then the
twelfth was devoted to the Function of the Poet,
which in its brief report intimates that Lowell was
thinking less of himself than of the country with
its need of a seer.

The delivery of the lectures had one immediate
and important result. Mr. Longfellow had been
Smith Professor of the French and Spanish Lan
guages and Literatures and Professor of Belles Let-
tres in Harvard College since 1836, having come
to the work when Lowell was midway through his
course, but he made up his mind in 1854 that he
must give up the post, not from ill-health, but be
cause he wished to try the effect of change on his
mind, and of freedom from routine. " Household
occupations," he wrote to Freiligrath, " children,
relatives, friends, strangers, and college lectures, so
completely fill up my days that I have no time for
poetry, and, consequently, the last two years have
been very unproductive with me:" Freiligrath had
heard rumors of Longfellow's resignation, and had
put in an application to be his successor. Long-

376 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

fellow could not give him any encouragement, since,
though foreigners were employed to teach the sev
eral languages, the professor himself must be an
American. There were, he said, six candidates for
the position, all friends of his. Lowell was not one
of these, but his lectures had marked him as the fit
successor, and so Longfellow wrote with satisfaction
in his diary, 31 January, 1855 : " Lowell is to be
my successor ! Dr. Walker talked with me about
it this morning, and I have been to see Lowell
about the preliminaries, and the matter is as good
as settled. I am sorry for some of my friends who
want the place. But for lectures, I think Lowell
the best of the candidates. He has won his spurs
and will give the college just what it needs." Low
ell himself told the news to his friend Briggs in
the following letter, dated 9 February, 1855 : —

" I have been silent ever so long because I could
not help it. I have been lecturing four times a
week (and am now), and, with my usual discretion,
put off writing my lectures till the last moment, so
that for five weeks I have been with the bayonet
pricking me on close behind, and have hardly dared
to think even of anything else. But I have not
forgotten you, my dear old friend, nor my love of
you, and I have felt a kind of pang now and then
because I said in my last note that I would soon
write to you — as, indeed, I am always intending
to do.

" I write now because I have something pleasant
to tell, and did not wish you to hear it first from
any one but me — though you always seem to live

AN END AND A BEGINNING 377

at one end of an ear of Dionysius that brings you
all the news of itself. The news is this : The Cor
poration of the college have asked me to take
Longfellow's place, and my nomination will go to
the Overseers next Thursday.

"The thing has come about in the pleasantest
way, and the place has sought me, not I, it. There
were seven applicants for the place, but I was not
one of them. On the contrary, I had refused to
be a candidate when it was proposed to me.

" I have accepted the offer, and am to go abroad
for a year to prepare myself. That is the hardest
part, but I did not feel competent without it.

"And the duties are pleasant. I am not to
have anything to do with teaching, as Longfellow
had, but only to deliver two courses of lectures in
the year — on pretty much any subject I choose,
and my salary is to be 11200.00.

" Everybody seems pleased. My first thought
was a sad one, for the heart that would have beat
warmest is still. Then I thought of my father,
and then of you. I think it will be all the better
for Mabel that I should have enough to live on,
without being forced to write, and I shall have
time enough after the first year to do pretty much
what I like. . . .

" My lectures have succeeded quite beyond my
expectation. One or two have been pretty good,
but I have felt sad in writing them, and somehow
feel as if I had not got myself into them very much.
However, folks are pleased."

Very likely the fame of his lectures brought him

378 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

invitations to go elsewhere ; at any rate, when his
course in Boston was finished, he made a tour in
the West, and became so desperately out of conceit
with the business before a week had passed that he
tried to escape the remaining lectures, but he was
not released and had at least the satisfaction of
carrying home six hundred dollars as the proceeds.
" I hate this business of lecturing," he wrote from
Madison, Wisconsin, to Miss Norton. " To be re
ceived at a bad inn by a solemn committee, in a
room with a stove that smokes but not exhilarates,
to have three cold fish-tails laid in your hand to
shake, to be carried to a cold lecture-room, to read
a cold lecture to a cold audience, to be carried
back to your smoke-side, paid, and the three fish
tails again — well, it is not delightful exactly."

Lowell does not seem to have written anything
in the short time that elapsed after the close of his
lecture tour before he sailed for Europe, though
he showed a lively interest in Mr. Stillman's paper
The Crayon, and sent it his poem " Invita Mi
nerva," in which Longfellow discovered a reminder
of Emerson's " Forerunners." The fact that Low
ell was to be the elder poet's successor naturally
drew them together much at this time. " A beau
tiful morning," wrote Longfellow on the 17th of
May. " Went and sat an hour with Lowell in his
upper chamber among the treetops. He sails for
Havre the first of June ; " and on the 29th he
records : " Lowell's friends gave him a farewell
dinner at the Revere, whereat I had the honor of
presiding. A joyous banquet: one of the plea-

379

santest I ever attended, — a meeting of friends to
take leave of a friend whom we all love." Low
ell himself refers briefly to the occasion in a note
written the next day : " Everything went off finely
after you left. Holmes sang another song and re
peated some very charming verses,1 and Rolker to
his own intense delight got through two stanzas of
' a helf to ve nortward boun',' William White hav
ing incautiously supplied him with the initial line.
He gave it with so much sentiment that we were
all entirely overcome and laughed so immoderately
that the brave Rolker at length sat down. We
sang ' Auld lang syne ' in true college style and so
parted. On the whole I renewed my youth last
night — and my recollections of ' 1790 ' this morn
ing, for I only had four hours' sleep. However,
aboard ship I shall have leisure enough to emulate
Chaucer's Morpheus

' That slept and did no other work.' "

That day Longfellow drove into town with Lowell
and saw him off for New York, whence he was to
sail.

But the weeks before Lowell's departure brought
other things to mind than leaving home and affec
tionate friends. He had been asked to pronounce
a poem before the senior class of Hamilton Col
lege at the coming commencement. The invita
tion reached him on the memorable day when the
runaway slave Burns was captured in the streets

1 Probably the verses beginning, —

" Farewell, for the bark has her breast to the tide."

380 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

of Boston, and he wrote in reply to the invitation :
" In six months I shall be in Switzerland ; an ocean
between me and a slave hunt, thank God ! "

Lowell again took passage in a sailing vessel,
the St. Nicholas, Bragdon, master, which left New
York 4 June, 1855, bound for Havre. Among his
companions was Dr. Elliott, under whose care he
had been a dozen years before, when his eyes were
in a bad way. It was a four weeks' voyage, and
Lowell amused himself with Lever's novels from
beginning to end, as he lay stretched in a ham
mock on the quarter-deck. Reaching France, he
spent three weeks in Paris among the pictures
chiefly, and made an excursion to Chartres, appar
ently his first visit, but one which left so deep an
impression on his mind that fourteen years later,
when he wrote " The Cathedral," which he wished
at first to call " A Day at Chartres," the same
images which sprang to his mind when he wrote of
his visit directly after in a letter to Mr. Norton,
recurred and found poetic expression. " It is the
home now," he wrote, " of innumerable swallows
and sparrows, who build upon the shoulders of
those old great ones (the stone angels and saints)
— as we little folks do too, I am afraid. Even
here I found the Norman — for when I mounted
to the spire, I saw numbers of hawks who dwell in
the higher parts, as in their castles, and prey on
the poor Saxons below." So in the poem he takes
a parting look

" At those old weather-pitted images
Of by-gone struggle, now so sternly calm.

AN END AND A BEGINNING 381

About their shoulders sparrows had built nests,
And fluttered, chirping, from gray perch to perch,
Now on a mitre poising, now a crown,
Irreverently happy. While I thought
How confident they were, what careless hearts
Flew on those lightsome wings and shared the sun,
A larger shadow crossed ; and looking up
I saw where, nesting in the hoary towers,
The sparrow-hawk slid forth on noiseless air,
With sidelong head that watched the joy below,
Grim Norman baron o'er this clan of Kelts."

From Paris Lowell ran over to London, chiefly
to see the Storys, who were there, and renewed his
acquaintance with Thackeray and the Brownings,
and fell in with Leigh Hunt. But his main busi
ness was to make himself proficient in German, and
so having taken his academic vacation in advance,
he journeyed through the Low Countries, and set
tled himself in Dresden for the autumn and winter.
The quiet Saxon city was a favorite resort for
Americans then even more than now, and for the
first few weeks his sister, Mrs. Putnam, was there
with her family. It was with a dull, heavy feeling
that he gave himself to his tasks, seeing very little
of society. " I confess frankly," he wrote, shortly
after his establishment there, " that I am good for
nothing, and have been for some time, and that
there are times almost every day when I wish to
die, be out of the world once for all. ... I fear
I shall come back with my eremitical tendencies
more developed than ever." But dogged persist
ence in work was something better than an ano
dyne, and work hard he did. " A man of my age,"
he wrote to his father, " has to study very hard in

382 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

acquiring a new language, and I cannot be satisfied
without knowing thoroughly all I undertake to
know. I am very well and constantly busy."

Mr. Norton with his sisters crossed the Atlantic
in the autumn, and Lowell wrote to him at Paris :
" Did I tell you that I had a room on the ground
floor, with a glass door giving upon a large garden ?
that I have a flock of sparrows that come to break
fast with me every morning, and eat loaf sugar to
the detriment of my coffee? That I go to hear
lectures on the Natural Sciences and have even
assisted at the anatomical class, — beginning with
horror and ending with interest? That we have
the best theatre here I ever saw ? And by the way,
if Bouffe acts the Abbe Galant while you are in
Paris, go and see it by all means. It is a truly
artistic piece of representation. If it be not too
cold, go down to Chartres. It is simply the best
thing in France, and must have come out of some
fine old Norman brain, — I am sure no Frenchman
could ever have conceived it. After all, there are
no such poets as the elements. Leave a thing to
them, and they redress all imperfections and ex
punge all prose."

He had planned spending a portion of his time
in Spain, and took lessons in Spanish in Dresden,
but finally abandoned the notion. His host and
hostess, with whom he talked, assured him that he
made astonishing progress in German. " What a
language it is to be sure ! " he wrote ; " with nomi
natives sending out as many roots as that witch-
grass which is the pest of all child-gardens, and

AN END AND A BEGINNING 383

sentences in which one sets sail like an admiral
with sealed orders, not knowing where the devil he
is going to till he is in mid-ocean ! " To his friend
Stillman he wrote, as the winter wore away : " To
say all in one word, I have been passing a very
wretched winter. I have been out of health and
out of spirits, gnawed a great part of the time by
an insatiable homesickness, and deprived of my
usual means of ridding myself of bad thoughts by
putting them into verse, for I have always felt that
I was here for the specific end of learning German,
and not of pleasing myself." Fifteen years later,
looking back, he wrote : " I once spent a winter in
Dresden, a southern climate compared with Eng
land, and really almost lost my respect for the sun
when I saw him groping among the chimney-pots
opposite my windows as he described his impov
erished arc in the sky." l

As spring drew on he was possessed with a long
ing for Italy, especially for the near friends who
were there, his sister Mary who had left Dresden
for Rome, the Storys, the Nortons, and others. He
turned his face thitherward the first of March,
meaning to be absent for two or three weeks only,
but he was not back in Dresden till the beginning
of June. " My journey in Italy," he wrote to his
father on his return, " was of much benefit to me.
I spent a fortnight with Mary in Rome, went with
her to Naples and spent another fortnight with her
there. At Naples we parted. I went to Sicily
and made the tour of the island, hoping to find

1 " A Good Word for Winter," in Literary Essays, iii. 267.

384 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

Mary still in Naples when I returned. But Sicily
required much more time than I had expected,
and when I came back I found Mary gone back
to Rome. I could not follow her thither, but took
the steamer to Genoa, and so over the Alps back to
Germany. I found Sicily very interesting in scen
ery and associations, and very saddening in its po
litical aspect. I believe it is the worst governed
country in Europe. With every advantage of cli
mate and soil, it is miserably poor, — there are no
roads, and vexatious restrictions repress trade in
every direction. The people struck me as looking
more depressed than any I have seen."

His itinerary, to be a little more detailed, was
to Venice, then by rail to Verona, and to Mantua.
There he hired a vettura to take him to Parma,
and in the same mode he went to Bologna, sleeping
at Modena on the way. From Bologna he went
to Ravenna and thence to Florence. He went to
Siena by the slow, roundabout rail, and then was
driven to Orvieto by Chiusi. At Orvieto he was
greeted by Mr. Norton, Mr. Page, and Mr. John
W. Field, who had come out to meet him and to
escort him to Rome. On his return from Genoa
he made a stop at Nuremberg. He lingered in
Dresden a few weeks, made another brief stay in
Paris, and was once more in Cambridge, in August,
1856.

On his return from Europe Lowell did not re
sume life at Elmwood, but took up his quarters
with his brother-in-law, Dr. Estes Howe, on Kirk-

House of Dr. Estes Howe

AN END AND A BEGINNING 387

in a way that demands toil and thought of the stu
dent, as Greek and Latin, and they only, used to
be taught, and they also open the way to higher
intellectual joys, to pastures new, and not the
worse for being so, as Greek and Latin, and they
only, used to do. ... If I did not rejoice in the
wonderful advance made in the comparative phi
lology of the modern languages, I should not have
the face to be standing here. But neither should
I if I shrank from saying what I believed to be
the truth, whether here or elsewhere. I think that
the purely linguistic side in the teaching of them
seems in the way to get more than its fitting share.
I insist only that in our college courses this should
be a separate study, and that, good as it is in itself,
it should, in the scheme of general instruction, be
restrained to its own function as the guide to some
thing better, and that something better is Litera
ture. The blossoms of language have certainly as
much value as its roots, for if the roots secrete food
and thereby transmit life to the plant, yet the joy
ous consummation of that life is in the blossoms,
which alone bear the seeds that distribute and
renew it in other growths. Exercise is good for
the muscles of mind and to keep it well in hand
for work, but the true end of Culture is to give it
play, a thing quite as needful. What I would
m*ge, therefore, is that no invidious distinction
should be made between the Old Learning and
the New, but that students, due regard being had
to their temperaments and faculties, should be en
couraged to take the course in modern languages

388

as being quite as good in point of mental disci
pline as any other, if pursued with the same thor
oughness and to the same end. And that end is
Literature, for there language first attains to a full
consciousness of its powers and to the delighted
exercise of them. Literature has escaped that
doom of Shinar which made our Association pos
sible, and still everywhere speaks in the universal
tongue of civilized man."

Lowell's office did not require of him elementary
instruction in modern languages, nor indeed was it
expected that he should do drill work in linguistics.
There were competent instructors then in the sev
eral languages, some of whom afterward came to be
eminent professors, as the department was divided.
He was not indifferent in the choice of assistants, but
once they were at work he left them to their own de
vices, and exercised the slightest sort of supervision
of them. There was no very nice division of labor,
except that, as I have said, these assistants took
the more exact grammatical details, yet they all
included more or less of literature in their work
with students. It can hardly be said that Lowell
did more than flavor his instruction of literature
with a pinch of grammar. Words in their origin
and changing meanings he did comment on, but
inflections, paradigms, and all the apparatus of
grammar formed no part of his interest in his
work.

In his essay on " Shakespeare Once More " he
has said : " There would be no dispute about the
advantages of that Greek culture which Schiller

AN END AND A BEGINNING 389

advocated with such generous eloquence, if the
great authors of antiquity had not been degraded
from teachers of thinking to drillers in grammar,
and made the ruthless pedagogues of root and in
flection, instead of companions for whose society
the mind must put on her highest mood. . . .
There is much that is deciduous in books, but all
that gives them a title to rank as literature, in the
highest sense, is perennial. Their vitality is the
vitality not of one or another blood or tongue, but
of human nature ; their truth is not topical and
transitory, but of universal acceptation ; and thus
all great authors seem the coevals not only of each
other, but of whoever reads them, growing wiser
with him as he grows wise, and unlocking to him
one secret after another as his own life and expe
rience give him the key, but on no other condi
tion."

Now Lowell's own interest in literature had been
direct. It would be idle to say that literature was
interesting or valuable to him only so far as it was
a criticism of life. It would be equally idle to say
that his pleasure in it was derived only from his
perception of it as great art. He carried to it the
same kind of interest which he carried into his own
production of literature. He was at once full of
that human sense which made him delight in a fine
expression of humanity, and he had the craftsman's
pleasure in excellent work, so that on the one
hand, though in his youth he raged against Pope,
in his more mature judgment he rejoiced in the
patience in careful finish which characterized him :

390 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

and, on the other hand, he gave himself with the
fullest abandonment to an admiration of Dante as
"the highest spiritual nature that has expressed
itself in rhythmical form." He thought him "the
first great poet who ever made a poem wholly out
of himself." In one of his unpublished lectures
Lowell uses Dante as a text for a discourse on the
pursuit of literature, and mingles with it a slight
element of autobiography, which makes it specially
fitting to repeat the passage here : —

" One is sometimes asked by young men to re
commend to them a course of reading. My advice
would always be to confine yourself to the supreme
books in whatever literature ; still better, to choose
some one great aiithor and grow thoroughly famil
iar with him. For as all roads lead to Rome, so
they all likewise lead thence ; and you will find
that in order to understand perfectly and weigh
exactly any really vital piece of literature, you will
be gradually and pleasantly persuaded to studies
and explorations of which you little dreamed when
you began, and will find yourselves scholars before
you are aware. If I may be allowed a personal
illustration, it was my own profound admiration
for the ' Divina Commedia ' of Dante that lured
me into what little learning I possess. For remem
ber that there is nothing less fruitful than scholar
ship for the sake of mere scholarship, nor anything
more wearisome in the attainment. But the mo
ment you have an object and a centre, attention is
quickened, the mother of memory ; and whatever
you acquire groups and arranges itself in an order

AN END AND A BEGINNING 391

which is lucid because it is everywhere in intelli
gent relation to an object of constant and growing
interest. Thus, as respects Dante, I asked myself,
What are his points of likeness or unlikeness with
the authors of classical antiquity? in how far is
either of these an advantage or defect ? What and
how much modern literature had preceded him ?
How much was he indebted to it ? How far had
the Italian language been subdued and suppled to
the uses of poetry or prose before his time ? How
much did he color the style or thought of the
authors who followed him ? Is it a fault or a
merit that he is so thoroughly impregnated with
the opinions, passions, and even prejudices not
only of his age but his country ? Was he right or
wrong in being a Ghibelline ? To what extent is a
certain freedom of opinion which he shows some
times on points of religious doctrine to be attrib
uted to the humanizing influences of the Crusades
in enlarging the horizon of the Western mind by
bringing it in contact with other races, religions,
and social arrangements ? These and a hundred
other such questions were constant stimulants to
thought and inquiry, stimulants such as no merely
objectless and, so to speak, impersonal study could
have supplied."

When, therefore, Lowell was brought face to
face with a company of young men, in the relation
of teacher, he appears not to have cast about to see
how he could adjust his powers to some prevailing
method of teaching, but to have used the material
of literature as an instrument of association, and

392 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

naturally, untrammelled by pedagogic theory, to
have tried to communicate to the minds about him
the kind of interest which the literature he was
handling inspired in him. So far was he from a
professional teacher that it is doubtful if he indi
vidualized his students much, or made any attempt
to find entrance into this or that mind by first try
ing to detect what opening the mind offered. Un
doubtedly, one or another with special aptitude or
appreciation may have stimulated him and quick
ened his faculty of instruction, but for the most
part these young men gave him the occasion for
utterance, and the text before him gave the theme
of discourse. Mr. Barrett Wendell, in his illumi
nating paper on Lowell as a teacher, confesses
with a generous chagrin, that though he had been
an enthusiastic pupil and had used Lowell's hospi
tality fully, the acquaintance was very one-sided.
He came to know Lowell well, but Lowell when he
met him again after no great interval of time, had
quite forgotten his face, and almost forgotten his
name.1

Though he could scarcely be said to have re
sorted to any set or customary methods of a profes
sional sort, he was not without recourse to simple
aids in his teaching. " Thirty odd years ago," he
wrote in 1889,2 " I brought home with me from
Nuremberg photographs of Peter Fischer's statu-

" Mr. Lowell as a Teacher : " Scribner''s Magazine, November,
1891. Included in his volume Stelligeri : Charles Scribner's Sons.
2 " Address before the Modern Language Association of Amer
ica."

AN END AND A BEGINNING 393

ettes of the twelve apostles. These I used to show
to my pupils and ask for a guess at their size. The
invariable answer was ' larger than life.' They
were really about eighteen inches high, and this
grandiose effect was wrought by simplicity of
treatment, dignity of pose, a large unfretted sweep
of drapery. This object lesson I found more tell
ing than much argument and exhortation." He
made also some attempt, when the method was
much more of a novelty than it is to-day, to bring in
the aid of illustration from art. He interested him*
self to rid his class-room in University Hall of some
dismal charts that hung on the walls, and brought
down from Elmwood a number of engravings and
photographs which he had collected in his travels
abroad, especially illustrations of Florence and
Rome ; one year he presented each of his class
who had persevered with a copy of the recently
discovered portrait of Dante by Giotto ; and again
he gave to each of his small class in Dante a copy
of Mr. Norton's privately printed volume on the
" New Life."

The actual exercise in the class-room was simple
enough and unconventional. The classes were not
large, and the relation of the teacher to his stu
dents was that of an older friend who knew in
a large way the author they were studying, and
drew upon his own knowledge and familiarity with
the text for comment and suggestion, rather than
troubled himself much to find out how much his
pupils knew. A student would trudge blunder
ingly along some passage, and Lowell would break

394 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

in, taking up the translation himself very likely,
and quickly find some suggestion for criticism, for
elaboration or incidental and remote comment.
Toward the close of the hour, question and an
swer, or free discussion yielded to the stream of
personal reminiscence or abundant reflection upon
which Lowell would by this time be launched.
Especially would he recall scenes in Florence,
sketch in words the effects of the Arno, Giotto's
Tower, the church in which Dante was baptized,
where he himself had seen children held at the
same font ; and so Lowell gave out of his treasures,
using that form of literature which was perhaps
the most perfectly fitted to his mind, free, uncon
strained talk. Suddenly, glancing at his watch
before him, — a time-piece which was as idly whim
sical as its owner, — he would stop, bow and walk
quickly out of the room, the men rising respectfully
as he left.

And the listeners ? They went away, a few
carelessly amused at the loose scholastic exercise
and complacent over the evasion of work, but some
stirred, quickened in their thought, and full of
admiration for this brilliant interpreter of life as
seen through the verse of Dante. One charm was
in the unexpectedness of it all. There was no
predicting what direction his talk would take.
" Now and again," says Mr. Wendell, " some word
or some passage would suggest to him a line of
thought — sometimes very earnest, sometimes para
doxically comical — that it never would have sug
gested to any one else ; and he would lean back in

AN END AND A BEGINNING 395

his chair, and talk away across country till he felt
like stopping ; or he would thrust his hands into
the pockets of his rather shabby sack-coat, and
pace the end of the room with his heavy laced
boots, and look at nothing in particular, and dis
course of things in general."

The formalities of academic work were of little
concern to Lowell. To be sure, after the first year
of neglect he yielded to Dr. Walker's persuasion,
and attended Faculty meetings with commendable
regularity, and took his share in the little details
of discipline which were gravely discussed. It
must have brought a smile to his mind, if not
to his face, when he found himself called upon to

join in a public admonition of , junior, " for

wearing an illegal coat after repeated warnings."
And examinations of his classes were wearisome
functions. " Perhaps," says Mr. Wendell, " from
unwillingness to degrade the text of Dante to such
use, Mr. Lowell set us, when we had read the In
ferno and part of the Purgatorio, a paper consist
ing of nothing but a long passage from Massimo
d'Azeglio, which we had three hours to translate.
This task we performed as best we might. Weeks
passed, and no news came of our marks. At last
one of the class, who was not quite at ease con
cerning his academic standing, ventured at the
close of a recitation to ask if Mr. Lowell had as
signed him a mark. Mr. Lowell looked at the
youth very gravely, and inquired what he really
thought his work deserved. The student rather
diffidently said that he hoped it was worth sixty

396 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

per cent. 'You may take it,' said Mr. Lowell,
' I don't want the bother of reading your book.' "

Nevertheless, indifferent as he may have been to
the customary details of academic work, and not a
little impatient of dry formalities, Lowell gave to the
college liberally of the best he had to give. Not
merely did he go through with his appointed tasks ;
he was always ready to take additional labor on
himself and to perform works of supererogation.
He had men come to read with him in his house,
and one season at least offered to conduct a group
of divinity students through the Inferno. It must
be remembered, moreover, that Lowell's instruc
tion was of two sorts, one in a special author or
group, to small select classes, the other general
lectures upon literature to large classes. Some
thing of the character of his free handling of sub
jects may be seen in the extracts from these lectures
preserved in The Harvard Crimson in 1894 ; and
the attitude which he took toward this side of his
work is recorded in the introductory passage to a
lecture on the Study of Literature.

" I confess," he says, " it is with more and more
diffidence that I rise every year to have my lit
tle talk with you about books and the men that
have written them. If I remember my terrestrial
globe rightly, one gets into his temperate zone
after passing the parallel of forty, and arrives at
that, shall I call it, Sheltered Haven of Middle
Age, when, in proportion as one is more careful
of the conclusions he arrives at, he is less zealous
in his desire that all mankind should agree with

AN END AND A BEGINNING 397

him. Moreover, the longer one studies, the more
thoroughly does one persuade himself that till he
knows everything, he knows nothing — that after
twenty years of criticism, one is still a mere weigher
and gauger : skilled only to judge what he may
chance to have been in the habit of inspecting at
his own little provincial custom-house. And as one
gets older he is apt to allow more for personal
idiosyncrasy, and to have less certainty that the
truth he had reached is not a one-sided one, and
that there are not fifty others equally important,
and (perhaps) equally unsatisfactory. Every bait
is not for every fish. We begin by admitting the
old doctor's apothegm that Art is long ; we gradu
ally become persuaded that it is like the Irishman's
rope, the other end of which was cut off. So dif
ferent is Art, whose concern is with the ideal and
potential, from Science, which is limited by the
actual and positive. Life is so short that it may
be fairly doubted whether any man has a right to
talk an hour, and I have learned at least so much,
— that I hope less to teach than to suggest."

The tone of distrustfulness which is an under
current in this passage is familiar enough to the
conscientious teacher, and Lowell, measuring the
vastness of literature and his own inadequacy to
press it home to his students, was fearful that the
outcome was slight in proportion to the cost to
himself. Yet he did not therefore spare himself.
During the years of his teaching, he was more
than ever the scholar, taking generous draughts of
the literature he was to teach, for long stretches

398 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

of time even engaged with his books twelve hours
out of the twenty-four. And so quickening was
his imagination that he went to his classes not to
decant the wine of learning from bottles just filled,
but to give them of his own rare essence distilled
from the hours of study. Hence he was a strong
and vivifying influence to the best men under him,
and to all he communicated something of that rich
culture which is not easily measured by lessons
learned and recited. No one could listen to his
teaching, as has been well said, without becoming
conscious that he was listening to a man not less
wise than accomplished and gifted.

In this matter of teaching, as in all the other
undertakings of his life, Lowell kept no strict
debit and credit account. He gave his measure
not according to the stipulated return, but freely,
generously. Especially did he overflow in friendli
ness. As he turned the lecture and recitation hour
into a causerie, and was careless in his exactions,
so he not only suffered but encouraged encroach
ment on his unprofessional hours. At first in Kirk-
land Street, afterward at Elmwood, he made his
students welcome, and the only difference it may
be between an hour in University Hall and an
hour by the wood fire at Elmwood, was in the
wider range of talk. It was here that his students
came nearest to him, for it was the men he quick
ened in the class-room who were avid of more just
such talk, and sought him in the greater intimacy
of his study. Yet, nearer as they came to him as
he sat with his pipe in slippered ease, and much as

AN END AND A BEGINNING 399

they drew from him, it is doubtful if there was
much reciprocity in the intercourse. As a com
parative stranger might draw from Lowell one of
his most delightful letters, if some question he
sent him happened to catch him at a favorable mo
ment, when he needed only an occasion for the let
ter that was on tap, so these students, one or more,
offered an easy audience, and Lowell, rarely out of
the mood for talk, would spin his gossamer or weave
his strong fabric for them as well as for any one
else, without paying very close heed to them per
sonally. In fine, the twenty years of college work
made little inroad on Lowell himself. He was fur
nished with occupation, he was made comparatively
easy in his simple need of a livelihood, and for the
rest his class-room work offered a natural outlet
for his abundant intellectual activity. He grumbled
sometimes over its demands on his time, but it is
doubtful if the reading world would have had very
much more from him had he never been subject to
this demand. It is even quite possible that the
work kept him very much more alive than he
might otherwise have been, saving him from a
species of intellectual luxury of an unproductive
sort ; it is certain that the hours added thus to his
other productive time were a stimulus and inspira
tion to many men, and that as a practical matter
the work done for his classes in the way of direct
preparation was the foundation of a good deal of
his published criticism.

And yet it is not so certain that his mood for
poetry was helped by his academic life. He wrote

400 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

to Mr. Stillman 14 May, 1857 : " While my lec
tures are on my mind I am not myself, and I seem
to see all the poetry drying out of me. I droop on
my rocks and hear the surge of the living waters,
but they will not reach me till some extraordinary
springtide, and maybe not then." It is true, this
expression must not be pressed too hardly — it may
have been only the mood of the moment ; but it is
evident that the time of freedom in poetic compo
sition had largely passed for him ; it returned once
and again, as for instance in " Agassiz " and the
" Commemoration Ode," it was compelled for him
by the occasion which drew out the second series
of the " Biglow Papers," but for the most part his
poetry after this date bears rather more the touch
of deliberation and less the- abandon of his early
enthusiasm. How far this is to be referred to the
circumstance of the constraint of academic work,
and how far to the change which came over his
life in the passage from ebullient youth to chas
tened manhood one would not care to say. But
the period of his next twenty years was the period
of prose in his production.

The regular, punctual life which the daily col
lege exercise demands came as a steadying influ
ence after the vagrancy and informality of the pre
vious years, and now there was added the gracious
and helpful presence of a self-contained, sympa
thetic, congenial woman. Mrs. Lowell, before her
death, had wished her daughter to be under the
oversight of an intimate friend, Miss Elizabeth
Dunlap, but before the arrangements could be com-

AN END AND A BEGINNING 401

pleted, Miss Dunlap died, and her sister Frances
took the place and had had charge of Mabel Low
ell ever since her father had left America for his
year of study in Germany. He had thought him
self most fortunate in making the arrangement,
and the friendly intercourse which naturally sprang
from this relation ripened steadily into affection.
In September, 1857, they were married, and now
he was enabled to resume the old life at Elmwood.
One or two passages from letters written at this
time by Lowell to Mr. Norton give a glimpse of
this new relation : " I have told you once or twice
that I should not be married again if I could help
it. The time has come when I cannot. A great
many things (which I cannot write about) have
conspired to bring me to this resolution, and I
rejoice in it, for I feel already stronger and better,
with an equability of mind that I have not felt for
years." * " I was glad as I could be to get your
heartily sympathizing letter. I had taken a step
of great import to my life and character, and
though I am careless of Mrs. Grundy's senti
ments on the occasion, I do care intensely for the
opinion of the few friends whom I value. With
its personal results to myself I am more than satis
fied, and I was convinced of the wisdom of what I
was about to do before I did it. I already begin
to feel like my old self again in health and spirits,
and feel secure now, if I die, of leaving Mabel to
wise and loving government. So intimate an ac
quaintance as mine has been with Miss Dunlap for
1 21 August, 1857.

402 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

nearly four years has made me know and love her,
and she certainly must know me well enough to
be safe in committing her happiness to my hands.
... I went down last week to Portland to make
the acquaintance of her family, and like them, espe
cially her mother, who is a person of great charac
ter. They live in a little bit of a house in a little
bit of a street, behind the great house (the biggest
in town) in which they were brought up, and not
one of them seemed conscious that they were not
welcoming me to a palace. There were no apol
ogies for want of room, no Dogberry hints at
losses, nor anything of that kind, but all was sim
ple, ladylike, and hearty. A family of girls who
expected to be rich, and have had to support them
selves and (I suspect) their mother in part, are
not likely to have any nonsense in them. I find
Miss Dunlap's education very complete in having
had the two great teachers, Wealth and Poverty
— one has taught not to value money, the other
to be independent of it." J "I am more and more
in love with Fanny, whose nature is so delightfully
cheerful that it is impossible for me to get into the
dumps even if I wished." 2

Mr. Stillman, a keen observer, has given a good
estimate of Mrs. Lowell's nature in these words:
" She was one of the rarest and most sympathetic
creatures I have ever known. She was the gov
erness of Lowell's daughter, when I first went to
stay at Elm wood, and I then felt the charm of her
character. She was a sincere Swedenborgian, with
1 31 August, 1857. 2 31 December, 1857.

AN END AND A BEGINNING 403

the serene faith and spiritual outlook I have gen
erally found to be characteristic of that sect ; with
a warmth of spiritual sympathy of which I have
known few so remarkable instances; a fine and
subtle faculty of appreciation, serious and tender,
which was to Lowell like an enfolding of the Di
vine Spirit. The only particular in which the
sympathy failed was in the feeling that she had
in regard to his humorous poems. She disliked
the vein. It was not that she lacked humor or the
appreciation of his, but she thought that kind of
literature unworthy of him. This she said to me
more than once. But, aside from this, she fitted
him like the air around him. He had felt the
charm of her character before he went to Europe,
and had begun to bend to it ; but as he said to me
after his marriage, he would make no sign till he
had tested by a prolonged absence the solidity of
the feeling he had felt growing up. He waited,
therefore, till his visit to Germany had satisfied
him that it was sympathy, and not propinquity,
that lay at the root of his inclination for her, be
fore declaring himself. No married life could be
more fortunate in all respects except one — they
had no children. But for all that his life required
she was to him healing from sorrow and a defence
against all trouble, a very spring of life and
hope." !

Mr. Howells also, who first knew her a decade
later, has sketched her in these lines : " She was

1 " A Few of Lowell's Letters," in The Old Rome and the New,
and Other Studies, by W. J. Stillraan.

404 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

a woman perfectly of the New England type and
tradition : almost repellently shy at first, and al
most glacially cold with new acquaintance, but
afterward very sweet and cordial. She was of a
dark beauty, with a regular face of the Spanish
outline ; Lowell was of an ideal manner toward
her, and of an admiration which delicately traves
tied itself and which she knew how to receive with
smiling irony." l Mrs. Herrick, in an unpublished
reminiscence, speaks of her in similar terms : " She
was a noble and beautiful woman eminently prac
tical in all the affairs of life. Commanding in
presence, gracious in her hospitality, highly cul
tured, and full of a keen appreciation of every
word of Mr. Lowell, and always charming and
womanly."

Stillman's tender sketch of Mrs. Lowell brings
to mind that it was in the summer of his marriage
that Lowell joined this friend in a reconnaissance
of the Adirondacks which was followed by the for
mation of the Adirondack Club, and the successive
sojourns in the wilderness which Emerson has
enshrined in his poem "The Adirondacs," and
Stillman himself has recorded delightfully in his
Autobiography as well as in magazine articles.2

" Ten men, ten guides, our company all told,"

says Emerson, but his chronicle was of the next

1 Literary Friends and Acquaintance, p. 242.

2 See especially " The Subjective of It," first printed in the
Atlantic Monthly, and " The Philosophers' Camp," printed in The
Century, and both included in The Old Rome and the New, and
Other Studies. And more particularly see the first volume of The.
Autobiography of a Journalist.

405

year when the club was fully organized, and Still-
man, Emerson, Lowell, Jeffries Wyman, E. R.
Hoar, Dr. Howe, Binney, Woodman, Agassiz,
and John Holmes, went into the wilderness. In
1857, the tentative exploring party, led by Still-
man, consisted of John Holmes, Dr. Estes Howe,
Lowell, and his two nephews, Charles and James
Lowell, forever immortalized in the passionate
verse of the second " Biglow Papers." Lowell,
who had known the near charms of nature in the
Waverley Oaks and Beaver Brook, and had tasted
the wild wood in his Maine excursion, entered with
frolic delight into this forest picnic. The condi
tions were such as to bring out the best that was
in him, for he had the freedom of the woods and
the satisfaction of congenial society. " He was the
soul," says Stillman, " of the merriment of the com
pany, fullest of witticisms, keenest in appreciation
of the liberty of the occasion and the genius loci.
. . . Not even Emerson, with all his indifference
to the mere form of things, took to unimproved
and uncivilized nature as Lowell did, and his free
delight in the Wilderness was a thing to remem
ber." To these companions, quick to appreciate
and respond, Lowell, light-hearted with the new
promise of happiness and set free in his mind by
the large privacy of the woods, brought the trea
sures of his fancy, his wit, his imagination. He
revelled especially in recounting those visionary ex
periences which seemed all the more real under the
starry skies and in the companionship of trees and
silent forest creatures. Yet with it all, his in-

406 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

quisitive, searching mind, quickened too by the
presence of scientific and philosophic comrades, was
forever probing these phenomena to discover what
was their ultimate rationale.

There can be little doubt that at this period of
his life Lowell was poised for flight, as it were,
having reached a stage when all the conditions
were most favorable for the full expression of his
powers. It is true that his academic work, as I
have said, did in a measure supplant a freer poetic
movement. But it may not unfairly be affirmed
that Lowell's attitude toward poetry was always
that of expectation of some greater gift to come.
His poems " Fancy's Casuistry," " In the Twi
light," " To the Muse," all written about this time,
record with iteration his restless pursuit of the elu
sive dream. His academic work afforded indeed a
daily outlet, but it could not satisfy the demand
for expression. Best of all, there was a pleasure-
house in which he dwelt with his wife and daugh
ter, perfectly fitted to the contentment of his spirit,
and to furnishing that ease of mind which gives
health of nature. Stillman has in another passage
drawn a picture which may well be given here in
evidence.

" Lowell was indeed very happy in his married
life, and amongst the pictures Memory will keep on
her tablet for me, till Death passes his sponge over
it once for all, is one of his wife lying in a long
chair under the trees at Dr. Howe's, when the sun
was getting cool, and laughing with her low, musi
cal laugh at a contest in punning between Lowell

AN END AND A BEGINNING 407

and myself, hand passibus cequis, but in which he
found enough to provoke his wit to activity ; her
almost Oriental eyes twinkling with fun, half-
closed and flashing from one to the other of us ;
her low, sweet forehead, wide between the tem
ples ; mouth wreathing with humor ; and the whole
frame, lithe and fragile, laughing with her eyes at
his extravagant and rollicking word-play. One
would hardly have said that she was a beautiful
woman, but fascinating she was in the happiest
sense of the word, with all the fascination of pure
and perfect womanhood and perfect happiness."

CHAPTER IX

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY
1857-1861

LOWELL had not been a year in his professor's
chair when he was invited to take another position
more closely identified with literature and having
its own cares and drudgery. Under the present
conditions of magazine editorship and of college
professorship as well, the union of the two offices
would be quite out of the question.1 But the con
dition in 1857 was different, and to install a profes
sor in Harvard College as editor of a new maga
zine was both natural and in a measure traditional.
I have already called attention to the effort made
in 1853 to establish a literary magazine, and to
Lowell's interest in the venture. The person most
concerned in that effort did not lose sight of his
project, and now pushed the matter through to a
fortunate conclusion.

Mr. Francis Henry Underwood was in 1857 the
literary adviser and reader for the firm of Phillips
& Sampson in Boston, and he was an ardent ad
mirer of Lowell. He was a strong advocate of
anti-slavery doctrines, and in his first proposals for

1 It is worth noting- that the year in which this sentence was
written, the Atlantic Monthly was, in a special contingency, edited
by the Professor of English Literature at Princeton.

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 409

a magazine in 1853 was working in conjunction
with the firm of John P. Jewett & Co., that had
just sprung into notice as publishers of " Uncle
Tom's Cabin." The firm with which he was now
connected was active chiefly in the publication of
cheap editions of standard woi-ks in literature. It
had a large Southern constituency, and when
" Uncle Tom's Cabin " was offered to it in the
form of a scrap-book of clippings from The Na
tional Era, commercial prudence dictated a polite
refusal. When, however, Mrs. Stowe's name had
become one of great value, it was easy for Phil
lips, Sampson & Co. to publish, as they did, her
" Sunny Memories " in 1854 and " Dred " in 1856.
Mr. Moses Dresser Phillips had been brought
up in the book trade and knew it first as a book
seller. He was a man who had large business
energy and laid his plans for wide connections and
not merely a local trade. Mr. Charles Sampson,
with whom he had formed his partnership, had died
about five years before, and his only partner at this
time was Mr. William Lee, well known for many
years as the senior partner in the publishing house
of Lee & Shepard. He was nearer Mr. Under
wood's age and it was chiefly with him that Mr.
Underwood talked over his cherished plan. It was
through him, indeed, that Mr. Underwood expected
to gain over Mr. Phillips, who had the practical
man's disti-ust of new enterprises suggested by
authors, and a temperament which was calculated
to chill enthusiasm. Mr. Underwood had already
won consent to engage in the work from Lowell,

410 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

Longfellow, Holmes, and others, and he repre
sented strongly to Mr. Lee the possibilities of a
magazine which should have at once a staff of
writers of a character so eminent. I suspect he
kept in the background any purpose he might have
of making the magazine play a part in politics.
Mr. Lee in turn at his daily lunch with Mr. Phil
lips kept that gentleman in mind of the project,
though he was himself neither an advocate nor

O

an opponent. He simply used Mr. Underwood's
arguments, the most effective of which may have
been the prospect held up before Mr. Phillips of
the association he should thus form with a distin
guished group.

Mr. Phillips having been won over, the plans for
the new magazine were rapidly pushed forward.
In all this Mr. Underwood was the active manager,
but Mr. Phillips as the head of the business now
took the leading place. At an early date, Tuesday,
5 May, 1857, he called together the men on whom
he most relied to give the enterprise distinction,
and gave them a dinner at the Parker House.
Fortunately an account of this meeting is in his
own words in a letter to a niece : —

" I must tell you about a little dinner party I
gave about two weeks ago. It would be proper,
perhaps, to state that the origin of it was a desire
to confer with my literary friends on a somewhat
extensive literary project, the particulars of which
I shall reserve until you come. But to the party :
my invitations included only R. W. Emerson,1 H.

1 Mr. Phillips was by marriage connected with Mr. Emerson's
family. '

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 411

W. Longfellow, J. R. Lowell, Mr. Motley (the
* Dutch Republic ' man), O. W. Holmes, Mr. Ca
bot,1 and Mr. Underwood, our literary man. Ima
gine your uncle as the head of such a table, with
such guests. The above named were the only ones
invited, and they were all present. We sat down
at three P. M., and rose at eight. The time occu
pied was longer by about four hours and thirty
minutes than I am in the habit of consuming in
that kind of occupation, but it was the richest time
intellectually by all odds that I have ever had.
Leaving myself and ' literary man ' out of the
group, I think you will agree with me that it
would be difficult to duplicate that number of such
conceded scholarship in the whole country beside.

" Mr. Emerson took the first post of honor at
my right, and Mr. Longfellow the second at my
left. The exaCt arrangement of the table was as
follows : —

Mr. Underwood

Cabot Lowell

Motley Holmes

Longfellow Emerson

Phillips

" They seemed so well pleased that they ad
journed, and invited me to meet them again to
morrow (the 20th), when I shall again meet the
same persons, with one other (Whipple, the essay
ist) added to that brilliant constellation of philo
sophical, poetic, and historical talent. Each one
is known alike on both sides of the Atlantic, and

1 Mr. J. Elliot Cabot.

412 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

is read beyond the limits of the English language.
Though all this is known to you, you will pardon
me for intruding it upon you. But still I have the
vanity to believe that you will think them the most
natural thoughts in the world to me. Though I
say it that should not, it was the proudest day of
my life."

There was another writer not at the dinner
whose cooperation it was important to secure.
Mrs. Stowe returned in June to America from
England, whither she had gone to secure copyright
for " Dred," and Mr. Phillips at once laid his plan
before her. She approved it most heartily and
promised to give it her cordial support. It is not
impossible that she made a definite promise of a
serial novel to begin with the first number, but the
sudden death a month later of her son Henry
brought such a mental strain upon her that it was
nearly a year before she could undertake any con
tinued writing. The first number of the Atlantic
Monthly contained a brief allegory by her, " The
Minister's Mourning Veil," and she contributed
later an essay, but "The Minister's Wooing" was
not begun in the magazine till December, 1858.

As a result of these preliminary plans, Mr. Un
derwood was dispatched in June to England to
secure the aid of English authors, and Mr. Lowell
was asked to take the position of editor. Lowell
had already taken an active part in creating an
interest in the venture among writers. Underwood
had turned to him as his most important ally, and
1 E. E. Hale's James Russell Lowell and his Friends.

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 413

Longfellow records in his diary, 29 April, 1857:
" Lowell was here last evening to interest me in a
new Magazine to be started in Boston by Phil
lips and Sampson. I told him I would write for
it if I wrote for any Magazine." Dr. Holmes
christened the magazine, and Lowell, from the
first, reckoned upon him for contributions. In
1885, when Dr. Holmes was resuming his regular
prose contributions after a long intermission, he
wrote in the introductory paper : 1 " He (Mr.
Lowell) thought there might be something in my
old portfolio which would be not unacceptable in
the new magazine. I ... wondered somewhat
when Mr. Lowell urged me with such earnestness
to become a contributor, and so, yielding to a pres
sure which I could not understand, and yet found
myself unable to resist, I promised to take a part
in the new venture, as an occasional writer in the
columns of the magazine." Lowell, reading this
number of the Atlantic in London, wrote to Dr.
Holmes : " The first number of your New Port
folio whets my appetite. Let me make one histori
cal correction. When I accepted the editorship of
the Atlantic, I made it a condition precedent that
you were the first contributor to be engaged. Said
1 not well ? " 2

Emerson apparently had asked if the contribu-

1 " The New Portfolio," January, 1885.

2 In publishing in book form The Mortal Antipathy, of which
the first paper of " The New Portfolio " was made the Introduc
tion, Dr. Holmes so far corrected his statement as to make it read :
" I wondered somewhat when Mr. Lowell insisted upon my becom
ing1 a contributor."

414 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

tions were to be signed, for Lowell wrote him, 14
September, 1857 : " All the articles will be anony
mous, but you will be quite helpless, for your name
is written in all kinds of self-betraying anagrams
over yours. But as far as we are concerned there
shall be as strict honor as the XlXth century
allows of. Your wishes shall govern the position
of the article ['Illusions,' in the first number],
though I should have preferred to give it the pre
cedence. I am afraid that where that is will be
the head of the table, whether or no."

In the same first number appeared four of Emer
son's poems, printed in a group : " The Romany
Girl," " The Chartist's Complaint," " Days," and
" Brahma." Emerson seems to have raised some
question about this, for in the same letter Lowell
writes : " About the poems I ought to say that
when I spoke of printing all four I was perhaps
greedy, and Mr. Underwood says we can't afford
it, reckoning each as a separate poem — which
means giving $50 apiece for them. Forgive me
for coming down into the kitchen thus, but as I
got the magazine into the scrape I must get it
out. My notion was that all the poems would be
published at once in a volume, and that therefore
it would be alike to you. I ought to have thought
that you sent them for selection, — and I will never
be so rapacious again till I have another so good
chance. If I am to have only one, give me ' Days.'
That is as limpid and complete as a Greek epi
gram. I quarrel, though, with one word 'hypo-
critic,' which I doubt does not give the very shade

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 415

of meaning you intended. I think you did wish to
imply intentional taking-in ? I will take the lib
erty to draw your notice to one or two things in
the proofs (of the poems), leaving them to your
own judgment entirely. ... It is not often that a
magazine carries such freight as your ' Illusions.'
. . . How about Mr. Thoreau ? "

It was not " Days " so much as " Brahma " that
seized upon the imagination. Mr. Trowbridge, in
his article on " The Author of Quabbin," says it
was " more talked about and puzzled over and
parodied than any other poem of sixteen lines
published within my recollection. ' What does it
mean ? ' was the question readers everywhere asked ;
and if one had the reputation of seeing a little way
into the Concord philosophy, he was liable at any
time to be stopped on the street by some perplexed
inquirer, who would draw him into the nearest
doorway, produce a crumpled newspaper clipping
from the recesses of a waistcoat pocket, and, with
knitted brows, exclaim, 'Here! you think you un
derstand Emerson ; now tell me what all this is
about, — If the red slayer tldnk he slaysj and so
forth."

The magazine appeared about the first of No
vember, and on the 19th Lowell wrote to Emerson :
" You have seen, no doubt, how the Philistines have
been parodying your ' Brahma,' and showing how
they still believe in their special god Baal, and are
unable to arrive at a conception of an omnipresent
Deity. I have not yet met with a single clever
one or I would have sent it to you for your amuse-

416

ment. Meanwhile, they are advertising the At
lantic in the very best way, and Mr. Underwood
tells me that the orders for the second number are
doubling on those for the first. I think you will
find the second an improvement. . . . Your poem
[" Two Rivers "] is to go into No. 3, simply as a
matter of housewifery, because we had already three
articles at $50. I think I told you which I chose
— ' Musketaquit.' The ' Solitude and Society '
[published in No. 2] has only one fault, that it
is not longer, but had it been only a page, there
would have been enough in it. Did you use the
word daysman a deliberately ? It has a technical
meaning, and I suppose you used it in that sense.
Mr. Nichols (the vermilion pencil) was outraged,
and appealed to me. I answered that you had a
right to use any word you liked till we found some
one who wrote better English to correct you. Or
did you mean the word to be merely the English
of journeyman ?

" I hope you will be able to give us something
more for No. 3 before you go off to lecture. The
number promises well thus far, but I wish to make
it a decided advance. You have no notion how
hard bestead we are. Out of 297 manuscripts only
at most six accepted. I begin to believe in the total
depravity of contributions.

" Let me thank you in especial for one line in

" He envied every daysman and drover in the tavern their
manly speech." In reprinting the paper in his volume Society
and Solitude, Emerson corrected to " He envied every drover and
lumberman."

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 417

'Brahma,' which abides with me as an intimate —
' When me they fly, I am the wings.'

You have crammed meaning there with an hydrau
lic press. Will not Thoreau give us something
from Moosehead ? "

Fourteen years earlier Lowell had welcomed
Whittier as a contributor to the Pioneer, and now
he renewed the old relation. He printed " Trite-
mius " in the first number and " Skipper Ireson's
Ride" in the second. Indeed, the Atlantic came
into existence most fortunately for Whittier, whose
fortunes it helped distinctly, as it gave him a me
dium for the publication of his purely literary
poems, and thus not only filled his pocket but
helped materially to place him before the public in
another guise than that of an ardent reformer.
Lowell's letter upon receipt of " Skipper Ireson's
Ride " is interesting both for its cordiality and for
the contrast in tone to his manner of addressing
Emerson. It may not unfairly be said that Emer
son was the only one of his contemporaries whom
Lowell addressed as if he were profoundly con
scious of his relation to him as a pupil to his mas
ter. Lowell's letter to Whittier is dated 4 Novem
ber, 1857.1

" I thank you heartily for the ballad, which will
go into the next number. I like it all the better
for its provincialism, — in all fine pears, you know,
we can taste the old puckers. I know the story

i Most of this letter is given in Mr. Pickard's Life and Letters
of John Greenleaf Whittier.

418 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

well. I am familiar with Marblehead and its dia
lect, and as the burthen is intentionally provincial
I have taken the liberty to print it in such a way
as shall give the peculiar accent, thus : —

' Cap'n Ireson for his horrd horrt
Was torred and feathered and corried in a corrt.'

That 's the way I 've always ' horrd it,' — only it
began ' Old Flud Ireson.' What a good name Ire-
son (son of wrath) is for the hero of such a his
tory !

" You see that ' Tritemius ' is going the rounds !
I meant to have sent you the proofs, and to have
asked you to make a change in it where these four
rhymes come together (assonances I mean), —
' door,' ' poor,' ' store,' ' more.' It annoyed me, but
I do not find that any one else has been troubled
by it, and everybody likes the poem. I am glad
that the Philistines have chosen some verses of
mine l for their target, not being able to compre
hend the bearing of them. I mean I am glad that
they did it rather than pick out those of any one
else for their scapegoat. I shall not let you rest
till I have got a New England pastoral out of you.
This last is cater-cousin to it, at least, being a pis
catorial.

" Will you be good enough to let me know how
much Mr. Underwood shall send you ? He will
remit at once.

" The sale of Maga has been very good consider
ing the times, and I think you will find the second
1 " The Origin of Didactic Poetry."

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 419

number better than the first. If you do not wish
the burthen so spelt, will you write me ? "

The year 1857 was one of great financial dis
tress, and the magazine felt something of this
influence even before it was published, for it was
intended to bring it out earlier than its first num
ber actually appeared. It was in May that the
preliminary arrangements were made and Lowell
secured as editor. As late, however, as the end
of that month, he was writing to a foreign cor
respondent that the editorship was a dead secret.
But as we have seen he had interested himself
in the venture from the outset. From time to
time after his attempt with the Pioneer he had
revolved in his mind plans for magazines. It is
safe to say that few prominent writers in Amer
ica, Longfellow and Cooper being the chief excep
tions, failed to dream of launching some vessel of
this sort that should be freighted with the best
of literature, and the initiative in almost all the
cases of important magazines has been taken by
the author rather than by the publisher. We have
perhaps come to the close of the period when a
new monthly magazine seems essential for the car
rying of American thought and letters, and enter
prise of this sort is more likely to seek an outlet
in weekly journalism ; but the men of letters who
were at the front in the middle of the century not
only had strong intellectual sympathy with the
brilliant Blackwood of that day, — Lowell in his
correspondence repeatedly uses the familiar form
Maya when referring to the Atlantic, — and had

420 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

been brought up on Tait, The London Journal,
Fraser, and other vehicles of contemporaneous
English and Scottish letters, but they demanded
some direct, open means of reaching readers, for
they had a great deal to say, which was ill-adapted
to daily journalism and for which they could not
wait till it should cool for book publication.

The conditions were favorable also from the
point of view of the publisher, and Phillips &
Sampson were in a good position to know this.
They were aware that the leading writers were in
their neighborhood. Washington Irving was an
old man, and Mr. Bryant by his associations was
rather of New England than of New York. Ex
cepting these two the men of national distinction,
Emerson, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Prescott, Mot
ley, Lowell, were New Englanders, and men known
by these to have large gifts, Holmes, Higginson,
Thoreau, Cabot, Norton, who were chiefly relied on
to make the early numbers, were their neighbors
and friends, while the commanding reputation of
Mrs. Stowe could at once be counted on to give
eclat to any magazine with which she was con
nected. Besides, the business of this house, which
was largely that of a jobbing house, so called, that
is, a house which sold miscellaneous books from
whatever publishers all over the country, was of
such a nature as to create a confidence in the
existence of a widespread audience of intelligent
readers.

Thus the publishers were prepared to under
take the venture upon a somewhat liberal scale for

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 421

those days. They chose the best printer near by,
Mr. Hough ton, who had already given distinction
to the name " Riverside," and they proposed to
make a handsome magazine, not wholly unlike in
its appearance the Edinburgh Blackwood. They
paid their editor a salary of $2500, and they ex
pected to pay contributors on a scale not to be
sure much in advance of what the best writers
could secure in other periodicals in Philadelphia
and New York, but more generous as regards the
average contributor. I think the mean rate of
prose was six dollars a page, though it may occa
sionally in the case of a tyro have dropped to five
dollars, and for poems they paid usually fifty dol
lars apiece. In a letter to a contributor who took
exception to the price paid him, Lowell wrote,
when the magazine had been running three or
four months, " You must be content. Six dollars a
page is more than can be got elsewhere, and we
only pay ten to folks whose names are worth the
other four dollars. Capite? What we may be
able to do hereafter, I know not. / shall always
be for liberal pay."

It might seem as though the distinction thus re
ferred to would hardly exist when all the articles
were unsigned, but the authorship for the most
part was an open secret. In those days the North
American Revieiv, as well as other like periodicals,
used to print a little slip with the authorship of
the separate articles set against the successive
numbers of the articles, and this slip, though not
inserted in all the copies sold or sent to subscrib-

422 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

ers, was at the service of newspapers and the inner
circle of contributors and near friends. In like
manner the authorship of the principal articles and
poems in the Atlantic leaked out, and for some,
like Emerson's poems and Holmes's " Autocrat,"
there could be no concealment.

The authors themselves sometimes were glad of
the privacy, as they thought it secured them more
independence and possibility of frankness. Lowell
thus wrote in September, 1859, to one of his con
tributors, who complained of what he thought want
of care : " I am very sorry indeed for the mis
chance, but am quite sure it was no fault of mine.
Where the ' copy ' passes through four or five
hands, all of whose owners know the handwriting,
the chances of leakage are great. I confess that
in the worry of the last week or two, I did not
remember to give any new caution just before the
publication of the October number. I am the more
sorry if it is to deprive us of your contributions.
For myself, I have always been opposed to the
publication of the authors' names at all. I do as
well as I can with so many things to think of at
once." The practice of withholding names pub
licly continued till 18G2, when the index at the end
of the volume disclosed the authorship of the arti
cles in the body of the magazine, and in 1870, the
practice was begun of signing contributions. The
anonymous character of the early volumes served,
however, to bury the authorship in some cases past
resurrection, as I found when I undertook to pre
pare a General Index in 1877, and again in 1889.

423

The ideal which Lowell formed for the magazine
may best be inferred from the character of the
numbers issued under his control, but in a few
passages in his letters to contributors and friends
he gives some glimpses of what was going on in
his mind as he faced the very practical questions
which arose in the conduct of the magazine. When
I became editor of the Atlantic, in the spring of
1890, he contrasted my position with his own, and
-remarked on the very much larger number of
writers on whom I could call for contributions, and
the higher average of training in literary work.
" Your task," he wrote me, " will be in one respect
at least easier than mine was thirty odd years ago,
for there are now twenty people who can write
English where there was one then. Indeed, there
are so many, and they do it so well, that it looks
as if literature as a profession or guild were near
its end, and as if every man (and woman) would
do his or her own on the principle of Every man
his own washerwoman." I thought and said, how
ever, that it was not general average but distinc
tion which gave a stamp to the magazine, and that
in that respect he certainly had the advantage. In
one of his letters to Mr. Richard Grant White,
who feared a Shakespeare article he had furnished
might be the one paper too much, he wrote : " I
don't care whether the public are tired of the Di
vine Villiams or not — a part of the magazine, as
long as I have anything to do with it, shall be ex
pressly not for the Mob (of well-dressed gentlemen
who read with ease)."

424 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

At the outset, before any number had been pub
lished, he wrote to a friend from whom he solicited
a contribution : " The magazine is going to be free
without being fanatical, and we hope to unite in it
all available talent of all shades of opinion. The
magazine is to have opinions of its own, and not
be afraid to speak them, but I think we shall be
scholarly and gentlemanlike." " This reading end
less manuscripts," he wrote to the same friend,
when he was in full tide of preparation for the
first number, " is hard work, and takes a great deal
of time, but I am resolved that nothing shall go
in which I have not first read. I wish to have
nothing go in that will merely cZo,1 but I fear I
can't keep so high a standard. It is astonishing
how much there is that keeps just short of the line
of good and drops into the limbo of indifferent."

" There is a constant pressure on me," he writes
again, " to ' popularize ' the magazine, which I re
sist without clamor." It is easy to understand this
attitude. Lowell cared greatly for the success of
the Atlantic, and he was governed in his conduct
of it by prudential considerations. In the letter
just quoted he had occasion to refer to a contro
versy which was then hot. " I am urged," he says,
" to take ground in the Albany controversy, but do
not feel that there is any ought in the matter,
and am sure the Trustees will beat in the end. I
think it would be unwise to let the magazine take

1 I recall the sententious principle which another editor an
nounced to me as the rule by which he was governed. "The
only question I ask myself is, must I take this ? "

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 425

a losing side unless clear justice required it. Am
I not right ? " But though he was not indifferent
to the commercial prosperity of the Atlantic, and
knew well that its opportunity for serving letters
was largely conditioned on its subscription list, he
did not make the fatal mistake of subordinating
his own judgment to a supposititious judgment of
the mysterious public which buys and reads maga
zines. It was his business to keep his own judg
ment free from the partisan bias of idiosyncrasy,
but he perceived well the more subtle danger to
which he was exposed of abdicating his authority
while keeping his title in the supposed interest of
the magazine. It was just because he was Lowell,
a man whom the public was ready to follow in
literary judgments, that he was in this place, and
it was in the application of a well-seasoned taste
that he demonstrated his fitness for the position.
He cared greatly to be the instrument of organiz
ing a body of first-rate literature, and the tone
which he gave the Atlantic during the few months
of his editorship became a tradition which power
fully affected its character after he retired from it.
He put his own stamp on it emphatically.

The public, meanwhile, began at once to exercise
that censorship which is a somewhat whimsical but
very substantial witness to the value of an enter
prise which is only technically private. The Lowell
Institute, for example, is on a foundation so exclu
sively personal that there is not even a nominal
board of trustees to be consulted in its manage-

O

ment : the courses of lectures which it offers are

426 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

absolutely free ; yet ever since its establishment it
has been subjected to criticism, good or ill natured,
which would seem to imply some indefeasible right
on the part of the public that criticises. Really, the
criticism is simply an ingenuous expression of the
profound interest which the public takes in a noble
trust. Somewhat in the same way when the At
lantic was established, the public refused to regard
it as offering wares which people might buy or not
as they liked. It recognized it as a literary organou,
as a power for good or ill ; it was immensely in
terested in it, and showed its interest by attacking
it severely on occasions.

Such an occasion, especially, was the appearance of
Dr. Holmes's " Professor at the Breakfast-Table,"
in which this writer, who had leaped into popu
larity through the " Autocrat," delivered himself
of opinions and judgments which were regarded
by a good many as dangerous and subversive, all
the more dangerous by reason of their wit and en
tertaining qualities. If one could believe many of
the newspapers, Dr. Holmes was a sort of reincar
nation of Voltaire, who stood for the most audacious
enemy of Christianity in modern times.

Some intimation of what Lowell was to en
counter as editor may be gathered from a few
words in a letter to T. W. Higginson, written at
the end of his first year, when " The Autocrat "
had already drawn the fire of one class of critics.

" I only look upon my duty," he says, " as a
vicarious one for Phillips and Sampson, that no
thing may go in (before we are firm on our feet)

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 427

that helps the ' religious ' press in their warfare
on us. Presently we shall be even with them, and
have a free magazine in its true sense. I never
allow any personal notion of mine to interfere,
except in cases of obvious obscurity, bad taste, or
bad grammar." And Mr. Norton prints l a letter
written shortly after to Dr. Holmes, which shows
clearly the cordial support which the editor gave
his contributor.

In one respect Lowell held a somewhat different
position from that occupied by later editors. The
Atlantic was so little troubled by competitors, and
its company of contributors was so determined by
a sort of natural selection, that Lowell's editorial
function was mainly discharged by the exercise of
discrimination in the choice of articles, and the
distribution of material through successive num
bers ; he had little to do in th'e way of foraging
for matter. It must not be supposed, however,
that there was anything perfunctory in his editor
ship. He was in love with literature, and his fine
taste stood him in good stead, not only in the re
jection of the commonplace, but in the perception
of qualities which might redeem an otherwise un
distinguished poem or paper. He had, too, that
enthusiasm in the discovery of excellence which
made him call his friends and neighbors together
when he had found some pearl of great price ; an
enthusiasm which he was very sure to share with
the author. He gave thus to the magazine that
character of distinction which conscientiousness
* Letters, i. 288, 289.

428 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

alone on the part of the editor, or even careful
study of conditions, cannot give.

He was, to be sure, a trifle negligent of the
business of writing to his contributors. He left as
much of the correspondence as he could to Mr.
Underwood, but in his somewhat capricious fashion
he might make an article an excuse for a long and
friendly letter. To one of his contributors who
pursued him for his opinion upon some accepted
manuscripts, he wrote a little testily : " You have
a right to frankness and shall have it. I did like

the article on better than the other, and I

should like the one particularly. But what of

that ? other folks may have liked the other better,
for aught I know. The fault of our tastes is in
our stars, not in ourselves. My wife can't endure
' The Biglow Papers,' and somehow or other her
dislike of them is a great refreshment to me and
makes me like her all the better. But I think it
is rather hard on an editor to expect him to give
his opinion about everything he prints — I mean
as to whether it is specially to his taste or not.
How long would my contributors put up with me
if I made Archbishops of Granada of them all ? I
tell you again, as I have told you before, that I
am always glad of an article from you, let it be
what it will, but (don't you see ?) I am gladdest
when it is such a one as only you can write. If I
could only print one number made of altogether
such, I could sing my nunc dimittis with a joyful
heart." A little of the fret of his life in this par
ticular appears in a whimsical tirade which he sent

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 429

to Mr. Norton on the eve of a flight to the Adiron-
dacks in the summer of 1859 : —

" To-day is Sunday ; at least the bells have been
shouting it, but ' the Sabbath dawns no Sabbath-
day for me.' I have been reading proof and pick
ing out manuscripts all the morning. Do you ever
get desperate ? I feel so now that I have got all
my manuscript-household in order. They appal me
by their mass. I look first at one box, and then at
another, and — fill my pipe. ' It is dreadful ! ' as
Clough's heroine says in the Bothie. And 128
pages which it would take one so long to fill with
his own stuff eats up that of other folks — no, I
don't mean that and would not allow such a meta
phor to a contributor — is satiated so soon with
that of other folks — that is, uses it up so slowly.

Mille-dam ! Have not two articles of been on

hand now for a year ? He seems to spin out his
brains as tenuously and uselessly as those creatures
that streak the air with gossamer — no chance of
catching even a stray fly of thought. Nay, his ob
ject is, I fancy, precisely what that of the aforesaid
creatures may be — merely to swing himself over
a gap. He is my ink — my pen-and-ink-ubus. I
could scalp him the rather as he wears a wig and
is deaf, and so would not be likely to hear of it.

Then there is who can't express himself in

less than sixteen pages on any imaginable topic.
It is a terrible thing this writing for the press, by
which a man's pen learns gradually to go by itself
as those Chinese servants are said to fan and sleep
at the same time. ' No, no, by heaven I am not

430 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

ma-a-d ! ' but I expect to be. I believe I have so
far settled matters that everybody will think me a
monster. But never mind, I get out of ear-shot
to-morrow."

How fully and carefully he could and would
write under special urgency may be seen by the
long letter which he addressed to Mrs. Stowe when
" The Minister's Wooing " had been running three
or four months in the Atlantic. The letter was
published in C. E. Stowe's life of his mother, and
is quoted also in Mrs. Fields's " Life and Letters
of Harriet Beecher Stowe."

The criticism for which this letter was an excuse
illustrates one very important element in Lowell's
editorial mind. However little he might exert
himself to go afield for articles in the body of the
magazine, he did not trust to luck for the critical
notices. In that department he took great pains
to secure competent workmen. To Lowell and his
contemporaries this matter of book reviews was
one of great consequence. In the evolution of lit
erary periodical literature the article of the old
Quarterly type, which was part a summary of a
book, part a further contribution to the subject,
and part a judgment on the author, had shed the
first constituent, had lost much of the second, but
preserved the third in a more condensed and, to a
certain degree, in a more impersonal spirit. But
criticism in its finest form was highly valued, and
the form of the book review was accepted as recog
nized and permanent. When the Atlantic, there
fore, was set up emphasis was laid On this serious'

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 431

side of literary study, and the causerie, the light
persiflage which serves as a relief in most maga
zines of a literary type — the Atlantic itself has
now its Contributors' Club — was disregarded. To
be sure, in the first number, Lowell printed what
seemed to promise a gay side to the magazine, a
leaf entitled " The Round Table," the purpose of
which, in this instance, was to introduce an occa
sional poem by Dr. Holmes, but I suspect he was
either a little alarmed at the prospect of setting
his table monthly with a dessert, or was satisfied
that the " Autocrat " would serve the same end.
At any rate, no second number of " The Round
Table " appeared. But each month the last few
pages of each number were given up, after the
well-accepted tradition, to notices of new books
with occasional surveys of current music and pic
tures.

Lowell's estimate of the value of literary criti
cism is expressed in a letter to Mr. Richard Grant
White, 10 June, 1858, apropos of a purpose Mr.
White then had of starting a weekly literary jour
nal in New York. " There is no one opprobrium
of American scholarship and letters so great," he
says, " as the general laxity and debasement of
criticism. With few exceptions our criticisms are
venial (whether the pay be money or friendship)
or partisan. An invitation to dinner may ma^ke a
Milton out of the sorriest Flecknoe, and a differ
ence in politics turn a creditable poet into a
dunce." Lowell relied on White for a certain
amount of criticism and wrote him, 8 March, 1859,

432 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

" There is nothing I so especially desire as to have
' experts ' make the Atlantic their pulpit. As long
as I continue editor, I wish you to understand that
your contributions will always be welcome, on no
ground of personal friendship, but because I know
they will be of value. I particularly wish to have
the department of ' Lit. Notices ' made more full.
I find so few people whom I can trust to write a
review ! Personal motives of one kind or other are
always sure to peep out. I think I have gained
one good from the fearful bore of reading manu
scripts ; it is gradually making me as impartial
as a chemical test — as insensible, too, perhaps ?
That is the only fear."

As a result partly of his difficulty in securing
satisfactory criticism and partly of his own aptitude
for work of this kind, Lowell wrote more than
forty reviews in the department during his editor
ship, besides several articles in the body of the
magazine which were really reviews, like his care
ful study in two numbers of White's Shakespeare.
He was in such friendly communication with Mr.
White regarding his work that it would have been
idle to wear any mask in his presence, and Mr.
White wrote him in great excitement over the first
of the two articles. " I am very much obliged to
you for your kind letter," Lowell replied ; " I
never saw a man who did not think himself indif
ferent to praise, nor one who did not like it. In
this country, where praise (or blame) is so cheap,
one can't think much of the old laudari ab lau
dato, for the laudatus himself may be the cele-

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 433

brated Snooks, but I think I know how to value it
from a man of discernment. I hope you will like
the last half of my article as well as the first. It
is honest, anyhow, and kindly meant, and I en
deavored to avoid all picking of flaws. Years ago
I laid to heart the saying of an old lady — ' that
the eleventh commandment was — Don't twit.' . . .

" I don't like reviewing, especially where the
author is an acquaintance. I find it so hard to be
impartial, but in your case I think my commenda
tion would lose half its force were it not qualified
with some adverse criticism. Please believe that I
wrote all with the kindest feelings."

Lowell certainly had nothing of that superficial
habit of reviewing which is at the bottom of most
of the unsatisfactory work of this kind. In re
viewing White's Shakespeare, for example, he read
over twice every word of the commentary and notes
and then laid the book aside that his impression
might settle and clarify before he wrote his criti
cism. Swift as he was in writing, there was, for
the most part, a long period of brooding over his
creative work and in study over his criticism. He
wrote an article, for instance, on " Wedgwood's
Dictionary," and complained regarding it to Mr.
Norton : " You know my unfortunate weakness for
doing things not quite superficially. So I have
been a week about it — press waiting — devil at
my elbow (I mean the printer's) — every diction
ary and vocabulary I own gradually gathering in a
semicircle round my chair, — and three of the days
of twelve solid hours each. And with what result ?

434 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

at most six pages, which not six men will care
anything about. And now it is done I feel as if I
had taken hold of the book the wrong way, and
that I should have devoted myself to his theory
more and to particulars less ; or, rather, that I
ought to have had more space. But I had a gap
to fill up, — just so much and no more. There is
one passage 1 in it that I wager will make all of
you laugh, and heavens ! what fun I could have
made of the book if I had been unscrupulous !
But I soon learned to respect Wedgwood's attain
ments, and resisted all temptation."

Just as Lowell's fun could find its way even
into an index, so in his sober criticisms he would
sometimes hide a jest for the delectation of espe
cially discerning readers, as when in his article
on White's Shakespeare, he remarks incidentally :
" To every commentator who has wantonly tam
pered with the text, or obscured it with his inky
cloud of paraphrase, we feel inclined to apply the
quadrisyllable name of the brother of Agis, king
of Sparta." Felton, Longfellow tells us in a let
ter to Sumner, was the first to unearth the joke
and to remember or discover that this name was
Eudamidas.

Apart from his considerable criticism Lowell
contributed to the volumes which he edited chiefly
poems and political articles. He printed the " Ode
to Happiness " already referred to, the notable
verses on "Italy, 1859," and the striking poem,

1 There are three or four witty passages, to which this is appli
cable.

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 435

" The Dead House," which has an autobiographic
interest, not from its being the record of an inci
dent or even from the mood which it reflects, but
from the fact that Lowell could write it at all and
disclaim any personal connection with the theme.
Mr. Norton has printed an interesting comment on
the poem by Lowell,1 and in another letter written
a few days later Lowell adds : " I have touched
here and there the poem I sent, and think of put
ting it in the Atlantic. Did you like it ? It is
pure fancy, though founded on a feeling I have
often had, — but for aesthetic reasons I put an
' inexpressive she ' into it." In how healthy a
mind must he have been, and how graciously
healed in his new life to write thus without having
his own great grief thrust itself between him and
his poem.

Yet there was a poem entitled " The Home,"
written at the same time which was rather a re
cord of personal experience than a universal mood
caught in terms of common life, and he cast it
aside therefore and never printed it. It has its
place in a memoir of his life.

" Here once my step -was quickened,
Here beckoned the opening- door,
And welcome ! thrilled from the threshold
To the foot it had felt before.

" A glow came forth to meet me,

The blithe flame laughed in the grate,
And shadows that danced on the ceiling
Danced faster with mine for a mate.

1 See Letters, i. 283, 284.

436 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

" ' Glad to see you, old friend,' yawned the armchair,

' This corner, you know, is your seat ; '
'Rest your slippers on me,' beamed the fender,
' I brighten at touch of your feet.'

" ' We know the practised finger,'

Said the books, ' that seems all brain,'
And the shy page rustled the secret
It had kept till I came again.

" Hummed the pillow, ' My down once trembled

On nightingales' throats that flew

Through the twilight gardens of Hafiz

To gather quaint dreams for you.'

" Ah me ! if the Past have heartsease,

It hath also rue for men : —
I come back : those unhealed ridges
Were not in the churchyard then !

" But (I think) the house is unaltered —

I will go and ask to look
At the rooms that were once familiar
To my life as its bed to the brook.

" Unaltered ! alas for the sameness

That makes the change but more !
How estranged seems the look of the windows,
How grates my foot on the floor !

" To learn this simple lesson

Need I go to Paris or Rome,
That the many make a household,
But only one the Home ?

" 'T was a smile, 't was a garment's rustle,
'T was nothing that you could phrase,
But the whole dumb dwelling grew conscious
And put on her looks and ways.

*' Were it mine, I would close the shutters
As you smooth the lids of the dead,

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 437

And the funeral fire should wind it,
This corpse of a Home that is dead !

" For it died that summer morning'

When she, its soul, was borne
To lie all dark in the hillside

That looks over woodland and corn."

" Is it anything ? " he wrote to the friend to
whom he sent it, " or is it nothing ? Or is it one
of those nothings that is something ? I think the
last stanza should be last but one and begin ' But
it died,' if 'dwelling' will do for an antecedent.
Is the first half too special ? "

There was indeed a gayer mood on him in the
midst of his work which could make him turn his
discomforts into a jest. " I cannot learn the knack
of doing six things at once," he wrote to a friend.
" I had my whole time to myself for too many
years, and the older I grow the nnreadier writer I
become. What a lucky dog Methusalem was !
Nothing to know, and nine hundred years to learn
it in." He was writing to a somewhat dry-minded
correspondent, but to a more congenial friend he
wrote at the same time : " Nothing has happened
to me since I saw you except manuscripts, and my
mind is gradually becoming a blank. It is very
depleting, I find, to read stuff week in and week
out (I almost spelt week with an «), and does not
help one to be a lively correspondent. But I be
lieve I could dictate five love stories at the same
time (as Napoleon the Other could despatches)
without mixing them in the least — and indeed it
would make no difference if I did. ' Julie gazed

438 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

into the eyes of her lover, which sought in vain to
escape her enquiring look, while the tears trembled
on her long dark lashes, but fell not (that ' fell
not' is new, I think). "And is it indeed so?"
she said slowly, after a pause in which her heart
leaped like an imprisoned bird.' — ' Meanwhile, the
elder of the two, a stern-featured man of some forty
winters, played with the hilt of his dagger, half
drawing and then sheathing again the Damascus
blade thin as the eloquence of Everett and elastic
as the conscience of Cass. " Didst mark the old
man tremble ? " " Cospetto ! my uncle, a noted
leech, was wont to say that iron was a good tonic
for unsteady nerves," and still he trifled with the
ominous looking weapon, etc., etc.' I think of
taking a contract to write all the stories myself at
so much a dozen — a good murder or a happy
marriage to be paid double."

One is reminded of Lamb's famous letter to
Manning when he reads a letter which Lowell
wrote to his brother-in-law, Captain Parker, then
in China : " A man who is eccentric enough to
prefer a part of the world where folks walk with
their heads down certainly deserves the commis
eration of his friends, but as for letters — how to
write and what to write about ? I can't write up
side down, and I suppose you can't read rightside
up. So it is clearly a waste of time, but you will
be able to read this after you get home again, when
old age will have given all the news in it a kind
of second-childhood, and it will have become fresh
by dint of having been forgotten.

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 439

" Of course there is n't any news — when was
there ever any ? For my own part, I don't regret
it, looking on news as generally only a short way
of saying nuisance, and believing Noah to have
been the happiest man that ever lived, for all the
gossips were five thousand fathoms under water,
and he knew that he should not hear anything
when he got into port. The daughters must have
been put to it, though, with nobody left but Shem,
Ham, and Japhet to work slippers and smoking
caps for, and never a new engagement to discuss.

" As for news here, — there was the College Ex
hibition day before yesterday, which was a good
deal like other Exhibitions only that it rained. I
suppose your wife has written you of the appoint
ment of Caihee as professor of the Chinese lan
guage and literature with a salary of ten piculs a
year, which she is allowed to raise in the college
grounds, the Corporation finding cucumber seed
and Theodore Parker the vinegar. A compromise
has been effected in theological matters, and she is
to worship Josh Bates the London banker instead
of simple Josh, in consideration of which Mr.
Bates will pay half the salary of a Bonze to be
imported express. The students will be allowed
to let off fire-crackers during her lectures. She
begins with an exposition of the doctrine of the
venerable confuse-us, which can hardly fail of be
ing in harmony with all existing systems of phi
losophy and theology. As all the Professors are
obliged to do something outside for a living, she
will continue to be on duty with Maggie. This is

440 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

a great triumph for the Woman's-Rights party,
who have nominated Mrs. — — for Governess, with
a Council of old women, including, I am told, Mr.

. You see the world moves up here. As to

other political intelligence, there is not much —
that quality is commonly wanting in such matters :
hut the Charleston Convention is expected to nomi
nate the Captain of the yacht Wanderer 1 for Presi
dent, as an exponent of the views of the more
moderate wing of the party (I mean, of course, the
Southern wing) on the subject of slavery. A Red
River overseer is to adorn the ticket as candidate
for the Vice-Presidency. We shall be likely at
last to get a truly conservative administration. At
home we have a rehearsal of ' Bonnie Doon,' Banks
being the Republican man, while the brays are well
performed by Mr. B. F. Butler.

" Cambridge meanwhile is all agog with a wed
ding to come off this afternoon, Darley the artist
and Miss Jenny (I think) Colburn. There is to
be a wonderful turn-out of handsome bridesmaids,
the bride having the good luck to be beautifully
cousined. A great crush of hoops is looked for at
Christ Church, and the coopers, it is said, will take
the occasion for a strike. All the girls are crazy
to go, and many who go in with a diameter of ten
feet will come out with only two. I have sent for
a new pair of lemon-colored gloves for the wedding
visit. There will be a jam, of course, but then I
am one of the harder sex, and shan't mind it.

1 The Wanderer was a slave-ship seized in New York harbor.
A Charleston jury refused to convict the captain.

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 441

They have my best wishes for a crop of little Dar-
leyings.

" So you are to have another war over there. I
think it a shabby piece of business. Can you
thrash a nation into friendly relations ? And if
a man don't like your society, can you change his
views by giving him a black eye? The Chinese
are not a nation of savages, and with two hundred
and forty millions of people they can hold out a
great while in killed, wounded, and missing. I
think John Bull and Johnny Crapaud will have
their hands full before they are done with it.
What has a Bull to do in a China-shop ? "

There was an incompatibility of temper in Low
ell which stood in the way of entire pleasure in
editing the Atlantic. He was not averse to work
— instances enough have been shown of this — but
he chafed under methodical work. He could work
hours and even days with scarcely a respite, but
he could also help himself to large measures of
loafing. A magazine, with its incessant inflow of
letters and manuscripts, and the demand which it
makes for periodic punctuality, ill befits such a
temper, and Lowell found a good deal of irksome-
ness in his daily task. " I used to be able to an
swer letters in the month during which I received
them," he wrote ruefully to Mr. White, 6 April,
1859, " but now they pile up and make a jam be
hind the boom of my occupations, till they carry
everything before them, and after a little confused
whirling float placidly down to the ocean of Obliv
ion. I do not know if it be so with everybody,

442 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

but with me the perpetual chance of interruption
to which I am liable induces a kind of stolid
despair. I am afraid that at this moment there
are at least a hundred and fifty unanswered letters
in and on and round my desk, whose blank [looks]
seem to say ' how long ? ' Your letter came just
in the midst of a bother in the Atlantic, which it
took all my diplomacy to settle so that both sides
should not bite their own noses off, to which mad
meal they had violent appetites. It is all ' fixed '
now, and things go smoothly again — but mean
while the hiatus in my correspondence grew daily
wider."

" I am at last even with my manuscripts," he
wrote to another friend. "It is splendid. Such
a heap as had gathered. It had snowed poems and
tales and essays, and an eddy had drifted them into
my study knee-deep. But I have shovelled myself
out, and hope 't is the last great storm of the sea
son. I even found time to go to Dresel's concert
last evening, where I saw one of your cousins. The
concert was nearly all Mendelssohn and seemed to
me a little vague and cloudy — beautiful clouds,
rose tinted and — indefinite. I longed for a good
riving flash of Italian lightning. Fanny liked it,
however, but I was rather bored. It seemed to
me like reading manuscripts titillated with promise
continually and finding no egregious and satisfying
fulfilment."

" Don't come this way again," he writes to Mr.
White, " without letting me know you are coming.
I want a talk with you, and I can't talk by letter,

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 443

for I can't write them when I am tired, and I am
tired all the time. If there be any truth in the
doctrine of compensations, the bobolinks in some
other stage of existence will all be caged in Grub
Street and made editors. They are altogether too
happy here. Well, maybe we shall be bobolinks.
If ever we should be, I can show you a fine meadow
for building in, a kind of grassy Venice with good
tussock foundations jutting everywhere from the
water."

After something more than a year's experience,
he wrote to Mr. Norton : " I am resolved that no
motive of my own comfort or advantage shall in
fluence me, but I hate the turmoil of such affairs,
despise the notoriety they give one, and long for
the day when I can be vacant to the Muses and to
my books for their own sakes. I cannot stand the
worry of it much longer without a lieutenant. To
have questions of style, grammar, and punctuation
in other people's articles to decide, while I want all
my concentration for what I am writing myself —
to have added to this personal appeals, from ill-
mannered correspondents whose articles have been
declined, to attend to — to sit at work sometimes
fifteen hours a day, as I have done lately — makes
me nervous, takes away my pluck, compels my
neglecting my friends, and induces the old fits of
the blues." l

" If my letters seem dry," he wrote again to Mr.
White, " it is no fault of mine. I am overworked
and overworried and overinterrupted, I can't write

1 Letters, i. 286.

444 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

a genial letter, but I want you and like you all the
same. If ever I get back to my old nest among
the trees at Elm wood, and I am no longer profes
sor or editor, with time enough to follow up a
doubtful passage in Shakespeare or a bit of dilet
tante philology, — then what pleasure I should
have in corresponding with you and exchanging
thoughts and suggestions. But now, if anything
occurs to me, I feel too tired to communicate it to
anybody, for my days are so broken that I am
forced sometimes to sit up till the birds sing to get
any time for my own studies."

In one point of excellence Lowell was exceed
ingly particular. He told me once in later life,
when we were discussing a proposed reissue of the
British Poets, of which he was to be editor-in-
chief, that I must not think he would accept any
one's proof-reading but his own. " I am really a
very careful proof-reader," he said, " though peo
ple fancy I am too indolent for such work." In a
letter to Mr. Norton, 18 October, 1859, presaging
some changes, he writes : " As to proofs, I must
read those myself, or I don't feel safe. Yet a
piece of bad grammar got into the October num
ber in spite of Mr. Nichols and me together." He
had, indeed, a most admirable aid in Mr. George
Nichols, who was a vigilant officer, carrying a
search warrant for any and all literary misdemean
ors. The Atlantic at this time was printed at
Riverside, and there is a charming description, in
a letter which Mr. Norton prints,1 of the morning
1 Letters, i. 28.1.

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 445

walk which Lowell was wont to take to the Press
by the footpath that lay along the river bank.

The pressure upon Lowell, which his college
work and his editorship brought, did, during these
four years, stop, somewhat, his spontaneity. He
wrote but few poems, and his letters show the
effort he needed to make to force some gayety.
"• I am that man among mortals," he wrote to
Miss Norton, " whose friends must forgive him the
most treasons against friendship, — silence, staying
away, dulness when he writes or comes — and I
know not what else, — yet I do believe that my
heart holds fire as long as another, and that I
neither grow cool nor forget sooner than most. I
cannot write unless I feel as if I could give the
best part of myself to those who deserve it best,
and I am so forever busy that I am either employed
or weary, and who can write then ? I believe that
none but an idle man can write a good letter. 1
mean by idle, a man who is not under the necessity
of tapping his brain on the public side, and tap
ping so freely that the runnings on the other can
not be sprightly for want of head. This is why
women are such good letter-writers. Their ordi
nary employments do not suck them dry of all
communicativeness, — I can't think of any other
word, — and their writing is their play, as it
should be. As for me, nowadays, taking up my
pen is only the reminder of work. This that I
write with is one worn to a stump with my lectures
three years — four years ago. I would not write
with the same one I had used for Mr. Gushing: and

446 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

drudgery. So the fault is not in the quill that
I am stupid. If I had only been laid away in a
drawer these four years, as it had been ! What a
fury I should be in to declare myself on all man
ner of topics ! But this exhaustion one feels from
overwork extends itself to the receptive faculties
as well. A dry sponge floats and is long in satu
rating. The mind, I think, goes even beyond this
— it must lie full to take up more."

The diversions which Lowell found in this period
were not many. He made his yearly excursion
to the Adirondacks, always looking forward eagerly
to it, and working furiously just before home-leav
ing, that he might go with some serenity of mind.
He saw scarcely anything of social life in Cam
bridge or Boston ; l he went frequently to Shady
Hill, the home of the Nortons, but nowhere else to
speak of, and he found true relaxation in his whist
club. Aside from all this, he derived most enter
tainment from the very informal clubs, with their
dinners, which had sprung chiefly out of the estab
lishment of the Atlantic. For a short time, ap
parently, there were two of these loose organiza
tions, the Atlantic Club, so called, which was the
gathering of the contributors at dinner, under the
auspices of the publishers, during the first months
of strong interest, — dinners which seem to have
sprung from the little one given by Mr. Phillips

1 He was elected into the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences, 14 November, 1855, and into the Massachusetts Histori
cal Society, 14 May, 1863, but he does not appear to have been a
frequent attendant at the meetings of either of these bodies.

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 447

at the institution of the magazine ; and the Satur
day Club, which still survives, a dining club, made
up at first chiefly of literary men naturally con
nected with the Atlantic, and of congenial spirits,
some of whom never and some rarely contributed.
This latter club appears, after a while, to have
supplanted the former. " Dined with the Atlantic
Monthly people," Longfellow writes in his diary,
21 December, 1857, and again, 14 May, 1859,
u Dined with the Atlantic Club, at Fondarives's.
The ' Atlantic ' is not the ' Saturday ' club, though
many members belong to both ; " and on 9 July,
1859, he again notes that he dined with the Atlan
tic Club at the Revere House, but the references
cease at this point, and the club dinners which he
attends afterward are Saturday Club dinners, held
on the last Saturday of the month at Parker's
Hotel. Dr. Holmes also, in later years, found the
flourishing Saturday Club so constant in his recol
lection that he was disposed to deny the existence
of any Atlantic Club. Properly speaking there
never was any club, but only occasional dinners to
which contributors were invited by the publishers.
It was of one of the Saturday Club dinners that
Lowell wrote 11 October, 1858 : " You were good
enough to tell me I might give you an account
of our dinner. There at least was a topic, but I
find that when I am full of work, I do not see the
men I go among, but only shadows which make
no impression. It is odd that when one's mind is
excited by writing so that one cannot sleep, one
should see in the same way a constant succession

448 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

of figures without really seeing them. They come
and change and go without any dependence on the
will, without any relation to the preoccupying
thought.

" I remember one good thing at our last dinner.
The dinner was for Stillman, and I proposed that
Judge Hoar should propose his health in a speech.
''Sir!' (a long pause) 'in what I have already
said, I believe I speak the sentiments of every
gentleman pi-esent, and lest I should fail to do so
in what I might further say ' -— (another pause) ' I
sit down.' And two days before at Agassiz' — the
Autocrat giving an account of his having learned
the fiddle, his brother John who sat opposite, ex
claimed, ' I can testify to it ; he has often fiddled
me out of the house as Orpheus did Eurydice out of
the infernal regions.' Is n't that good ? It makes
me laugh to look at it now that I have written it
down. The Autocrat relating how Simmons the
Oak Hall man had sent him the two finest pears
— 'of trowsers?' interrupted somebody. But can
one send poured-out Champagne all the way to
Newport, and hope that one bubble will burst after
it gets there to tell what it used to be ? A dinner
is never a good thing the next day. For the mo
ment, though, what is better? We dissolve our
pearls and drink them nobly — if we have them —
but bring none away. A good talk is almost as
much out of the question among clever men as
among men who think themselves clever. Crea
tion in pairs proves the foreordained superiority of
the tete-a-tete. Nevertheless, we live and dine and

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 449

die." And a few months later he recorded a bit
about a dinner of the Atlantic people, which has
had more than one raconteur. " Our dinner the
other day was very pleasant. Only Mrs. Stowe
and Miss Prescott, author of " In a Cellar.' She
is very nice and bright. Mrs. Stowe would not let
us have any wine, and I told her that I was sorry
she should deprive herself of so many pleasant
dinners in England (whither she goes 3d August)
by so self-denying an ordinance. She took at once,
colored a little, laughed, and asked me to order
some champagne."

Perhaps the very necessity for constant criticism,
whether unrecorded, as where he determined the
grounds for acceptance and rejection of manu
scripts, or in his correspondence with contributors,
and his own articles in the magazine, tended to
stimulate Lowell's critical faculty. At any rate, in
the midst of his busy hours he would now and then
yield to the impulse, created by some current pub
lication it may be, and give expression to judg
ments, either publicly or in his letters to friends.
Thus his interest in " The Minister's Wooing " led
him not only into writing the letter to Mrs. Stowe,
already noticed, but into a careful, unsigned ana
lysis of Mrs. Stowe's power in the Neiv York Tri
bune.1

In August, 1859, Mr. Phillips, the publisher,
died. Lowell characterized him as a man of great
energy and pluck ; but during the months previ-

1 This criticism also is given iu C. E. Stowe's The Life of Har
riet Beechtr Stowe.

450 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

ous to his death Mr. Phillips had by no means
been in sound health, and had fretted much over
complications in his affairs. He seems to have
had reason, for a few weeks after the death of
Mr. Phillips, the firm of Phillips & Sampson sus
pended payment, and went into the hands of an
assignee, Mr. Harvey Jewell. " What is to come,
or why they have done it," Lowell wrote to Mr.
Norton, " I cannot conjecture. I trust arrange
ments will be made to put the Atlantic in good
hands. That at least is a paying thing. If it
shall end in my losing the editorship, it would
cause me little regret, for it would leave me more
time to myself." The assignee brought out the
October number of the magazine, pending the set
tlement of affairs, and there was a lively competi
tion among publishers to secure the publication.
The Harpers proposed to buy it, to suppress their
rival, it was said ; there were offers from Philadel
phia, and some of the younger men connected with
the firm of Phillips & Sampson made an effort to
establish a new firm which should buy the whole
business of Phillips & Sampson, including the
magazine. Mr. AVilliam Lee, who had left a large
sum with the firm when he withdrew from it, was
at the time travelling in Europe, and by a series
of mischances did not even learn of the situation
till it was too late for him to have a hand in any
reorganization. There was even a plan mooted
by which Lowell and his friends should buy the
magazine, but Lowell's own judgment was against
this. " It ought," he said, " to be in the hands of

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 451

a practical publisher for we should be in danger
of running aground."

In the end, Ticknor & Fields bought the maga
zine. " As friend to friend," Lowell wrote to Mr.
Norton, " I may say that I think it just the best
arrangement possible, though I did not like to say
so beforehand too plainly. I did not wish in any

way to stand in 's light, but it is much better

as it is. Whether T. will want me or not, is an
other question. I suppose that he will think that
Fields will make a good editor, beside saving the
salary, and F. may think so too. In certain re
spects he would, as the dining editor for example,
to look after authors when they came to Boston
and the like. I shall be quite satisfied, anyhow, —
though the salary is a convenience, for I have done
nothing to advance my own private interest in the
matter."

The break-up of the business of Phillips &
Sampson naturally led to the distribution of their
copyright books, and Emerson was one of the au
thors publishing with them, who was now con
sidering the transfer of his books to Ticknor &
Fields. " I saw Ticknor yesterday," Lowell wrote
him, 21 October, 1859, " and he says he wants the
magazine to go on as it has gone. I never talked
so long with him before, and the impression he
gave was that of a man very shrewd in business
after it is once in train, but very inert of judg
ment. I rather think Fields is captain when at
home.1 My opinion about your book is this. The

1 Mr. Fields was in Europe when the transaction occurred.

452 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

book is a sure one at any rate, and if Little &
Brown publish it, they will sell copies to all who
would buy anything of yours at any rate. They
are eminently respectable and trustworthy. Tick-
nor would have of course the same chance to start
on that L. & B. would have, but I should think it
natural that he would be able to sell more copies
because the kind of book he publishes is rather
less of the library-completing sort than those of L.
& B., and because (I suppose) he has correspond
ents who always take a certain number of his
books whether or no. In short, it seems to me
that his chances in the way of distribution and
putting the volume on many counters and under
many eyes are the best. With an author like you
this is not much, but it is something. . . .

" I have quite a prize in the December number
— the story of a real filibuster written by himself.1
It is well done and will interest you. I wish to
get together a few of our chief tritons at a dinner
soon to make them acquainted with the new Posei
don. Will you come ? At Porter's or Parker's,
whichever you prefer, and as early as you like so
that you may get back to Concord."

After Mr. Fields returned from Europe the
question of the editorship came up anew. The
times were lowering, every one who had ventures
was taking in sail, Mr. Fields had been the edi
torial member of the book firm, his relations with
authors both at home and abroad were of the most

" Experience of Samuel Absalom, Filibuster," by D. Deade-
rick.

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 453

friendly nature, and it was thus most reasonable
and natural that he should take charge of the
Atlantic, and Lowell resigned the editorship in a
half-serious, half-whimsical letter which Mr. Nor
ton has printed.1 It is clear that he had a divided
mind. He had become so far wonted to his work
that he had less anxiety in performing it, and he
had an honest pride in maintaining the high stand
ard which his own taste and judgment had created.
He was glad also of the greater ease in money mat
ters which the salary gave ; and yet, as his letters
show, he welcomed the freedom from the daily
exactions of the editorial life, and the return to
the more self-determined occupation which he had
known most of his days.

Yet in editing the Atlantic, Lowell was more or
less consciously reenforcing the love of literature
which commanded him, and the combined labor of
academic study and teaching and the organization
of literature undoubtedly enriched his life, and
made him more ready for the large enterprises
which lay before him.

It was a great reinforcement of contentment
that he had returned to his old home at Elmwood.
There had been some talk of his taking the house
which Professor Felton was to give up on getting
a new one, but arrangement was made, finally, to
go back to Elmwood, and there the new establish
ment was set up with Dr. Lowell and Miss Rebecca
Lowell as joint occupants. This was a few months
before Lowell retired from the editorship of the
1 Letters, i. 310. May 23, 1861.

454 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

Atlantic, and his content appears in a letter which
he was writing to Mr. Richard Grant White, 15
March, 1861 : " We are having," he says, " the
finest snowstorm of the winter. And what a de
light to me to be here in my old garret at Elm-
wood, no college to go to (it is Saturday), sheltered
by the very wings of the storm, and shut in from
all the world by this white cloud of peace let down
from heaven ! The great chimney stacks roar a
deep bass like Harlaem organ pipes. The old
lightning rod thumps and rattles with every gust,
as I used to hear it so long ago when there were
no colleges nor magazines, nor any world outside
our belt of pines. I am at home again. I like
everything and eveiybody. Presently I shall draw
on my Canada leggings and wade down to the post
with this. I shall come back full of snow and
northwest wind and appetite. I shall sit down at
my own table in the old familiar room where I
hope to welcome you one of these days." ]

In his L'Envoi, " To the Muse," which appears
to have been written not far from this time, he has
some bright reflections on the elusiveness of the
spirit of poetry which beckoned him. In point of
fact there was very little poetry written by him
while he was at once professor and editor. His
" Biglow Papers " had been republished in Eng
land, with an Introduction by T. Hughes. His old
friend, Mr. Gay, was in England at the time and
had a hand in the business. The publication natu-

1 The household at Elm wood was broken in upon apparently
not long after the return of the Lowells, by the death of Dr.
Charles Lowell, 20 January, 1861.

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 455

rally drew fresh attention to Lowell's satiric verse,
and he wrote, a trifle piqued : " I confess I am a
little jealous of people who like my humorous
poems best. I guess they are right ' up to date,'
but I feel also as if it were a little unfair to t' other
half of me, which has not fairly worked itself free
so as to combine — here I was interrupted day be
fore yesterday, and I believe I was going to say —
so as to combine the results of life wi{h those of
study. However, I grow more and more persuaded
that what a man is is of greater consequence than
what he does, especially than what he writes. The
secret is, I suppose, to work oneself out clear so
that what he is may be one with what he writes."

END OF VOLUME I

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